Saturn’s strange hexagon
p2pnet.net OT news:- A strange feature lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides still encircles Saturn’s north pole, says NASA.
“NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged the feature over two decades ago” but, “The fact that it has appeared in Cassini images indicates that it is a long-lived feature,” says a statement.
“A second hexagon, significantly darker than the brighter historical feature, is also visible in the Cassini pictures. The spacecraft’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer is the first instrument to capture the entire hexagon feature in one image.”
“We’ve never seen anything like this on any other planet,” says Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
“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.”
NASA says the hexagon is similar to Earth’s polar vortex with winds blowing in a circular pattern around the polar region.
“On Saturn, the vortex has a hexagonal rather than circular shape.,” it says. “The hexagon is nearly 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it.
“The new images taken in thermal-infrared light show the hexagon extends much deeper down into the atmosphere than previously expected, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) below the cloud tops. A system of clouds lies within the hexagon. The clouds appear to be whipping around the hexagon like cars on a racetrack.”
Also See:
NASA – Cassini Images Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn, March 26, 2007
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