Saturn's day is 6 minutes shorter than previously measured

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by Ken Croswell

Bad news for any slackers on Saturn: The days on the ringed planet are shorter than the number you'll find in most books--6 minutes briefer, to be exact. The faster spin drastically changes how scientists think Saturn's winds blow.

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Interesting that a 6 minute change in day length results in an additional 400KPH at the equator and so has a significant impact on winds.
 
Drakkith said:
So shorts and sandals are out?
No, they're OK, just don't wear anything loose. Tight-fitting clothes with lots of lead weights in the pockets are the current style on Saturn.
 
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Interesting. Equatorial bulge and rotation speed combined are a typical method to determine the interior structure of an object (see our Ceres thread). Reversing this approach means they need a good idea of the mass distribution inside ("using [...] possible internal density profiles").
It is nice to see that tracking the clouds gives similar results. I wonder why the old value - that apparently was known to be unreliable - was used then.