Vast hexagon discovered at Saturn's north pole

**Steam** · 23rd February 2008, 21:29

This is news from last year, but it's absolutely incredible and hasn't been posted here before.

A giant hexagon shape has been found at the northern pole of Saturn, formed by clouds waves, or clear-gases in the atmosphere there, or something.

A little discovery-channel style documentary about it

A deep, hexagon-shaped feature lies above Saturn's north pole, newly released images from the Cassini spacecraft reveal. The strange structure appears to be nearly stationary and may be a wave that stretches deep into the giant planet's atmosphere.

NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft glimpsed parts of the feature nearly 30 years ago, but because of their viewing angle, they were not able to see the whole thing. Now, Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer has captured the entire hexagon for the first time, thanks to a series of infrared images it took as the spacecraft flew over the pole in October and November 2006.

The hexagon spans nearly 25,000 kilometres – the width of two Earths – and appears to be a clearing in the clouds that extends at least 75 km below the planet's visible cloudtops.

"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," says team member Kevin Baines of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet."

http://space.newscientist.com/articl...orth-pole.html

**Big Dave** · 23rd February 2008, 21:58

**Ixion** · 23rd February 2008, 22:01

So, effectively, there's a honking big nut at the top of the planet. I wonder what happens if you undo it?

**Madness** · 23rd February 2008, 22:04

Apparently it's an inverted hex, used for tensioning the rings of saturn with a big-fuck-off allen key.

**McJim** · 23rd February 2008, 22:04

Originally Posted by Ixion

So, effectively, there's a honking big nut at the top of the planet. I wonder what happens if you undo it?

You get a prize for having a long enough spanner to do the job

**Finn** · 23rd February 2008, 22:09

Oh no, not a vast hexagon!

**Motu** · 23rd February 2008, 22:18

Been there on my way through to here,part of the tourist package - like,everyone does the Hex of Saturn.I've got the T shirt somewhere....but it has 8 arm holes,and since I found riding bikes here was fun I morphed the other 6 arms into a more useful appendage for this planet.....