What the Heck Is This?

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Today's image might resemble art. And, well, it is. But nobody painted it.

Need a hint? It's otherworldly art.

Last hint: Art is sometimes born of tempests. See the full image below — and another image that makes all this clear.

This photo is a close-up of a false-color image of a giant, raging storm on Saturn, released yesterday (July 6) by NASA. The tempest, dubbed the Great White Spot, is nearly as wide as Earth — about 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers). It has a tail of white clouds that encircles all of Saturn. Check out the captions on both the images below for more.

These false-color images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft chronicle a day in the life of a huge storm that developed from a small spot that appeared 12 weeks earlier in Saturn's northern mid-latitudes. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)

An image of Saturn taken in December 2010 by the Cassini spacecraft shows a storm with a latitudinal and longitudinal extent of 10,000 km and 17,000 km, respectively. The latitudinal extent of the storm’s head is approximately the distance from London to Cape Town. A "tail" emerging from its southern edge extends further eastward. (Image credit: Carolyn Porco and CICLOPS; NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI )

Got a strange or interesting photo related to science, nature or technology? What the Heck, send it to me, and maybe I'll use it. Or follow me on Twitter, or Facebook.

Robert Roy Britt
Robert Roy Britt
Rob was a writer and editor at Space.com starting in 1999. He served as managing editor of Live Science at its launch in 2004. He is now Chief Content Officer overseeing media properties for the sites’ parent company, Purch. Prior to joining the company, Rob was an editor at The Star-Ledger in New Jersey, and in 1998 he was founder and editor of the science news website ExploreZone. He has a journalism degree from Humboldt State University in California.