"Bizarre" Hexagon on Saturn

NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 took similar pictures of Saturn over two decades ago, but the images were assumed by some to be either the byproduct of auroral activities or a malfunctioning lens. Recently, Cassini sent home pics of the same atmospheric feature that was seen there almost a quarter century ago, so apparently it's no anamoly. As of right now, there is no conclusive explanation for it. Pretty cool though...

REDORBIT:

"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."

The hexagon is similar to Earth's polar vortex, which has winds blowing in a circular pattern around the polar region. On Saturn, the vortex has a hexagonal rather than circular shape. The hexagon is nearly 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it.

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