Saturn has two hexagons, not one, swirling around its north pole
A vortex in the stratosphere mirrors a famous six-sided cyclone in the clouds below
A new hexagon has emerged high in the skies over Saturn’s north pole.
As spring turned to summer in the planet’s northern hemisphere, a six-sided vortex appeared in the stratosphere. Surprisingly, the polar polygon seems to mirror the famous hexagonal cyclone that swirls in the clouds hundreds of kilometers below, researchers report online September 3 in Nature Communications.
When NASA’s Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004 — during summer in the southern hemisphere — the probe spied a similar vortex in the stratosphere over the south pole, though that one was shaped more like a plain old circle. As summer gradually turned to autumn, that vortex vanished.