Saturn / Natural world
Saturn’s hexagon
Around Saturn’s north pole, a jet stream traces an enormous hexagon. The atmosphere has been drawing the same improbable shape for decades.
Straight edges appear in a moving atmosphere. The hexagon is a persistent wave in a jet stream, giving fluid motion a shape that looks almost engineered.
A CLOSER LOOK
Cassini’s view brings out the smaller storms turning within the six-sided boundary. The image uses false color to distinguish features in the atmosphere; these are not the colors a visitor would see with the naked eye.
The boundary encloses a polar region of circulating clouds. Watching its motion turns an apparently static geometric outline into a weather system. That is what makes the image worth lingering over: an entire planet’s atmosphere can organize itself into a remarkably stable pattern.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
NASASaturn’s Streaming Hexagon StormOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.