Bizarre Hexagon Spotted on Saturn SPACE.com Staff

SPACE.com 
Tue Mar 27, 1:30 PM ET
 


One of the most bizarre weather patterns known has been photographed at 
Saturn, where astronomers have spotted a huge, six-sided feature circling 
the north pole.

 
Rather than the normally sinuous cloud structures seen on all planets 
that have atmospheres, this thing is a hexagon. 


The honeycomb-like feature has been seen before. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 
spacecraft imaged it more than two decades ago. Now, having spotted it 
with the Cassini spacecraft, scientists conclude it is a long-lasting 
oddity. 


"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion 
with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric 
expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer 
team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never 
seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick 
atmosphere, where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate, 
is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric 
figure, yet there it is." 


The hexagon is nearly 15,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) across. Nearly 
four Earths could fit inside it. The thermal imagery shows the hexagon 
extends about 60 miles (100 kilometers) down into the clouds. 


At Saturn's south pole, Cassini recently spotted a freaky human eye-like 
feature that resembles a hurricane. 


"It's amazing to see such striking differences on opposite ends of 
Saturn's poles," said Bob Brown, team leader of the Cassini visual and 
infrared mapping spectrometer at the University of Arizona. "At the south 
pole we have what appears to be a hurricane with a giant eye, and at the 
north pole of Saturn we have this geometric feature, which is completely 
different."


The hexagon appears to have remained fixed with Saturn's rotation rate 
and axis since first glimpsed by Voyager 26 years ago. The actual 
rotation rate of Saturn is still uncertain, which means nobody knows 
exactly how long the planet's day is. 


"Once we understand its dynamical nature, this long-lived, deep-seated 
polar hexagon may give us a clue to the true rotation rate of the deep 
atmosphere and perhaps the interior," Baines said.

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