"Sir Code Cracker" <code_cracker@pookmail.com> wrote in
news:1175376968.598227.310070@y66g2000hsf.googlegroups.com: 

On Mar 30, 2:02 pm, The Hermit <oldweird...@mountaintop.com> wrote:

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.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070327/sc_space/bizarrehexagonspotted.
.. turn;_ylt=Arkvq0GSeZ1CnCX2zncsgMn737YB

--http://www.writingup.com/blog/jim_the_hermit

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070327/sc_space/bizarrehexagonspotted.
.. turn;_ylt=Arkvq0GSeZ1CnCX2zncsgMn737YB

The link doesn't work...

try this:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070327_saturn_hex.html
-- 
http://www.writingup.com/blog/jim_the_hermit