Saturn's hexagon..how have I missed this?

[Rum]

I tend to keep up with so called 'popular science'. I even buy New Scientist now and gain and bend my brain trying to understand some of the articles. I was a bit surprised therefore to stumble on 'Saturn's hexagons' earlier this morning browsing one of the video clip sites I subscribe to (Maniac World at http://www.maniacworld.com/, which I recommend for a daily giggle.

Anyway it seems that Saturn has a hexagonal 'vortex' at its north pole. I thought I was looking at a hoax story, but it seems it is true. Anyone seen this?

[Randydeluxe]

It was a quite widely reported-on ~22 years ago. I think it made a cover of National Geographic or somesuch.

One solution:



From the same group:

[Gawdzilla Sama]

A persisting hexagonal wave pattern around the north polar vortex in the atmosphere at about 78°N was first noted in the Voyager images.[33][34] Unlike the north pole, HST imaging of the south polar region indicates the presence of a jet stream, but no strong polar vortex nor any hexagonal standing wave.[35] However, NASA reported in November 2006 that the Cassini spacecraft observed a 'hurricane-like' storm locked to the south pole that had a clearly defined eyewall.[36] This observation is particularly notable because eyewall clouds had not previously been seen on any planet other than Earth (including a failure to observe an eyewall in the Great Red Spot of Jupiter by the Galileo spacecraft).[37]

The straight sides of the northern polar hexagon are each about 13 800 km long. The entire structure rotates with a period of 10h 39 m 24s, the same period as that of the planet's radio emissions, which is assumed to be equal to the period of rotation of Saturn's interior. The hexagonal feature does not shift in longitude like the other clouds in the visible atmosphere.

The pattern's origin is a matter of much speculation. Most astronomers seem to think it was caused by some standing-wave pattern in the atmosphere; but the hexagon might be a novel aurora. Polygonal shapes have been replicated in spinning buckets of fluid in a laboratory.[38]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn#Nor ... ud_pattern

[FBM]

There's only one way to know for sure, but it's going to take a great big one of these:

mfg351%20series.jpg (51.59 KiB) Viewed 518 times

[Meekychuppet]

Cassini found this years ago. It is pretty weird, but only because we tend to think that the planets will be uniform in the way they are. We accept the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, but that doesn't make it any less weird, it's just familiar. This storm on Saturn has fallen off the radar, mainly because the rings and the moonlets associated with it are far more interesting than anyone predicted. I personally think the hexagon is powered in some way by rising convection currents from within Saturn. Circular would not be unusual, this may well be several current converging at the pole to come up with this geometric arrangement. It would not surprise me to find something like this on Neptune too, given the weather there. If there's one thing we're learning it's that the solar system is still more dynamic than we ever imagined - witness the discovery of seasons on Pluto. There will be plenty more surprises like this yet.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Voyager pix gave us the first images, btw.

[Meekychuppet]

Voyager pix gave us the first images, btw.

Not the hexagon it didn't. Voyager just caught Saturn and the major moons.

Edit: it was Voyager after all. I had no idea, which is pretty bad for an astronomer.

I'm going to do some reading...