The Unsolved Mystery of Saturn's Hexagon -4 Times the Size of Earth

"Cassini is indebted to Voyager for its many fascinating discoveries and for pavingthe way for Cassini," says Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL, who started her career working on Voyager from 1977 to 1989. "On Cassini, we still compare our data to Voyager's and proudly build on Voyager's heritage." But the Voyager Mission left a few mysteries that Cassini has not yet solved. One of the most perplexing mysteries is Saturn's hexagpn. 'Now that we can see undulations and circular features instead of blobs in the hexagon, we can start trying to solve some of the unanswered questions about one of the most bizarre things we've ever seen in the solar system, said Kevin Baines, Atmospheric scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory after viewing Cassini images in 2009. After the sunlight faded, darkness shrouded the north pole for 15 years. The hexagon was originally discovered in images taken by the Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s.

Tempest-from-hell seen on Saturn (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists analyzing data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft now have the first-ever, up-close details of a Saturn storm that is eight times the surface area of Earth. On Dec. 5, 2010, Cassini first detected the storm that has been raging ever since. It appears approximately 35 degrees north latitude of Saturn. Pictures from Cassini's imaging cameras show the storm wrapping around the entire planet covering approximately 2 billion square miles (4 billion square kilometers). The storm is about 500 times larger than the biggest storm previously seen by Cassini during several months from 2009 to 2010. "Cassini shows us that Saturn is bipolar," said Andrew Ingersoll, an author of the study and a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. At its most intense, the storm generated more than 10 lightning flashes per second. The storm's results are the first activities of a new "Saturn Storm Watch" campaign.

Cloud layers Saturn's hexagon Hexagonal cloud pattern around north pole of Saturn Saturn's hexagon is a persistent approximately hexagonal cloud pattern around the north pole of the planet Saturn, located at about 78°N.[1][2][3] The sides of the hexagon are about 14,500 km (9,000 mi) long,[4][5][6][7] which is about 2,000 km (1,200 mi) longer than the diameter of Earth.[8] The hexagon may be a bit more than 29,000 km (18,000 mi) wide,[9] may be 300 km (190 mi) high, and may be a jet stream made of atmospheric gases moving at 320 km/h (200 mph).[4][5][10] It rotates with a period of 10h 39m 24s, the same period as Saturn's radio emissions from its interior.[11] The hexagon does not shift in longitude like other clouds in the visible atmosphere.[12] Saturn's hexagon was discovered during the Voyager mission in 1981, and was later revisited by Cassini-Huygens in 2006. During the Cassini mission, the hexagon changed from a mostly blue color to more of a golden color. Discovery[edit] Color[edit] See also[edit]

South Pole vortex Other features