Saturns Hexagon and Rings
Explanation:
Why would clouds form a hexagon on Saturn?
Nobody is sure.
Originally discovered during the
Voyager flybys of
Saturn in the 1980s, nobody has ever seen anything like it anywhere else in the
Solar System.
If Saturn's South Pole wasn't strange enough with its
rotating vortex,
Saturn's North Pole might be considered even stranger.
The bizarre cloud pattern is
shown above
in great detail by a recent image taken by the
Saturn-orbiting
Cassini spacecraft.
This and similar images show the stability of the
hexagon
even 20+ years after Voyager.
Movies
of Saturn's North Pole show the cloud structure maintaining its
hexagonal structure while rotating.
Unlike individual clouds appearing like a
hexagon on Earth,
the Saturn
cloud pattern appears to have six well defined sides of nearly equal length.
Four
Earths could fit inside the
hexagon.
Imaged from the side, the
dark shadow of the
Jovian planet
is seen eclipsing part of its
grand system of rings,
partly visible on the upper right.
Astrophysicists:
Browse 550+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library
APOD Public Talk: Feb. 21,
Howard Astronomical League,
Columbia, MD
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
