Strange Hexagon Cloud Spotted Over Saturn

A huge cloud hovering for around 26 years over Saturn's north pole has been photographed by the Cassini spacecraft. What makes this cloud unusual is that it appears to be a perfect hexagon-shaped pattern, with six linear, equal sides within the circular rotation of the weather. The weather storm is almost 15,000 miles across and using thermal imagery, the hexagon shape itself appears to go 60 miles down into the clouds. The honeycomb feature has been seen by NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft and imaged more than two decades ago. Now, having spotted it with the Cassini spacecraft, scientists conclude it is a long-lasting oddity. For almost 26 years, the weather pattern has seemingly been fixed in Saturn's rotation, but nobody really knows what that rotation rate is.

"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."

Cassini also spotted a human eye-shaped oddity over the south pole of Saturn. This pattern resembles a hurricane feature but the image is freaky. "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."