sciencetalk

An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped fea­ture en­cir­cling Sat­urn’s north pole has cap­tured the in­ter­est of sci­en­tists with NASA’s Cas­si­ni space­craft mis­sion.


This night­time view of Sat­urn's north pole shows a bi­zarre six-sided hex­a­gon fea­ture en­cir­cling the north pole. (Cour­te­sy: NASA/J­PL/U­ni­ver of Ar­i­zo­na)

The agency’s Voy­ag­er 1 and 2 space­craft im­aged the hex­a­gon over two dec­ades ago, but its ap­pear­ance in new Cas­si­ni im­ages shows it’s long lived, height­en­ing the rid­dle, sci­en­tists said.


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“We’ve nev­er seen an­y­thing like this on any oth­er plan­et,” said Kev­in Baines of the Cas­si­ni team at NASA’s Je­t Pro­pul­sion Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Pas­a­de­na, Ca­lif. In­deed, Sat­urn’s thick at­mos­phere “is per­haps the last place you’d ex­pect to see such a six-sided ge­o­met­ric fig­ure, yet there it is.”


http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-034

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/070327_saturn.htm