Skip to navigation | Skip to content  Bizarre hexagons found on
Saturn   These hexagons, one inside the other, are 25,000
kilometres wide and have been at Saturn's north pole for at
least 20 years (Image: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Something downright weird has been sighted twirling over
Saturn's north pole: a long-lived double hexagon formed in the
clouds.  The two six-sided features, one inside the other, are
in stark contrast to the hurricane-like vortex that has been
observed at the ringed planet's south pole.  NASA's orbiting
Cassini spacecraft has imaged both poles.  "We haven't seen a
[geometric] feature like this anywhere else on any other
planet," says Cassini scientist Dr Kevin Baines of the NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It's unbelievable."  One of the
unexplained hexagons was glimpsed obliquely before, by the
Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts more than 20 years ago, which is how
scientists know it's a durable feature.  Now, Cassini's infrared
mapping instrument has provided the first whole, ir