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March 28, 2007

'Strange' Hexagon Seen on Saturn

Topics: General Science

Astronomers have spotted a huge, six-sided feature circling the north pole of Saturn.It's described as one of the most bizarre weather patterns known, nearly 15,000 miles across, extends about 60 miles down into the clouds, and it appears to be long-lasting:

... Rather than the normally sinuous cloud structures seen on all planets that have atmospheres, this thing is a hexagon.

...The honeycomb-like feature has been seen before. NASA 's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged it more than two decades ago. Now, having spotted it with the Cassini spacecraft, scientists conclude it is a long-lasting oddity.

... "This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere, where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate, is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."

Read more here.

Hat tip - Harry Owens

Posted by Richard at March 28, 2007 7:36 AM

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