The Mystery of Saturn's Hexagon

Saturn's fascinating hexagonal polar cloud formation

I'll admit, I was pretty wigged out when I first saw images of the bizarre hexagonal cloud formation over Saturn's north pole that was captured by the Cassini spaceprobe in 2006.

I was obsessed with solving the mystery. I didn't know how on Earth (or on Saturn) a polygon-shaped cloud could exist.

We're not accustomed to seeing geometrically shaped storms forming here on Earth, so the hex was, to me, startlingly strange. Adding to the impressiveness of the cloud structure was its enormity, big enough to swallow four Earths within its rotating perimeter.

Fortunately, a group of clever and learned scientists put forth a brilliant explanation. By using existing knowledge of fluid dynamics and combining it with the understanding of polar vortexes on Earth and other planets, a theory was developed that explained how a super-fast jetstream at a certain latitude could create a series of vortexes that would collectively and symmetrically shape a slower moving inner vortex into a geometric shape.

The video below demonstrates the effect created in a laboratory simulating the meteorological conditions at the north pole of Saturn. Case closed? Not definitively, but at least now I can sleep at night.