This new study was published September 3, 2018 in the journal Nature Communications







This article originally appeared on Discovermagazine.com

Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester, UK, the lead author of this new study, described Saturn’s hexagon in an email as “a meandering jet stream” with a “hexagonal, six-sided appearance when viewed from over the pole.”“The hexagon is just a current of air, and weather features,” Andrew Ingersoll, of the Cassini Imaging Team, said about the structure, according to a NASA statement While we’ve known about Saturn’s hexagon since 1981, this discovery of a hexagonal vortex at a higher altitude was a shock to the team. Fletcher said that “the presence of the hexagon, hundreds of kilometres above the clouds, was a total surprise.” The team didn’t expect to find an almost mirror image of Saturn’s famous hexagon shape farther up in the clouds.Unfortunately, Saturn’s seasons last for a long time. “One Saturnian year spans roughly 30 Earth years, so the winters are long,” co-author Sandrine Guerlet from Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, France added in the statement. So, these “seasonal vortexes,” or vortexes associated with seasons like Saturn’s summer, can’t be observed for long stretches.That means Cassini couldn’t see what was happening in the north pole’s high altitudes for many years because it was simply too cold to make observations.However, Fletcher said that it’s not clear if the vortex is always there but is just too cold to observe, or if the vortex only appears in warmer seasons. However, thanks to Cassini’s remarkable lifespan, the craft was able to watch the planet long enough to gather invaluable data on Saturn’s incredible vortices.Still, a number of questions remain. “How did the hexagon come to be, how has it been stable for so long, and is it connected in any way to the deeper interior of Saturn?” Fletcher said. It’s also unclear how similar the northern and southern vortices are, as only one pole seems to have hexagonal vortices, according to the statement. But Fletcher said that despite outstanding questions, this work is “an important constraint on all our future models of this fascinating structure.”