Hexagons on Saturn

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:30 am

Pasadena, Calif. -- An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission.

NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged the feature over two decades ago. The fact that it has appeared in Cassini images indicates that it is a long-lived feature. 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.

"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.

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.

"It's amazing to see such striking differences on opposite ends of Saturn's poles," said Bob Brown, team leader of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, University of Arizona, Tucson. "At the south pole we have what appears to be a hurricane with a giant eye, and at the north pole of Saturn we have this geometric feature, which is completely different."

The Saturn north pole hexagon has not been visible to Cassini's visual cameras, because it's winter in that area, so the hexagon is under the cover of the long polar night, which lasts about 15 years. The infrared mapping spectrometer can image Saturn in both daytime and nighttime conditions and see deep inside. It imaged the feature with thermal wavelengths near 5 microns (seven times the wavelength visible to the human eye) during a 12-day period beginning on Oct. 30, 2006. As winter wanes over the next two years, the feature may become visible to the visual cameras.

Based on the new images and more information on the depth of the feature, scientists think it is not linked to Saturn's radio emissions or to auroral activity, as once contemplated, even though Saturn's northern aurora lies nearly overhead.

The hexagon appears to have remained fixed with Saturn's rotation rate and axis since first glimpsed by Voyager 26 years ago. The actual rotation rate of Saturn is still uncertain.

"Once we understand its dynamical nature, this long-lived, deep-seated polar hexagon may give us a clue to the true rotation rate of the deep atmosphere and perhaps the interior," added Baines.

The hexagon images and movie, including the north polar auroras are available at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu .

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 2:22 pm

Maybe the guys who built TMA-0, -1 and Big Brother finally got tired of rectangles?

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 7:22 pm

Batman wrote:Maybe the guys who built TMA-0, -1 and Big Brother finally got tired of rectangles?

I have no idea what any of that means.

Now I'm only saying this so it's said in the thread and nobody else has to feel obliged to do it:

OMG ALIENS!!!!!

Not that I really think so but my knowledge of fluid dynamics is highly limited and I have no idea how that would form, except I'll bet the explanation is very complicated and cool.

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 7:47 pm

Mayabird wrote:I have no idea what any of that means.

I believe it's a 2001 reference.

Anywho, take me to your leader, fuckers.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 4:34 pm

I can see Maya not getting the reference but you 'believe' it's from 2001? I weep for humanity. Well, LA anyway.
And I hate to tell you Josh but you are NOT an extraterrestrial.
Besides by the time (if ever) humanity makes up its collective mind on who is our leader you probably died of old age. Assuming a sufficient fraction of humanity survives the process to make the endeavour worthwhile in the first place.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » Fri Mar 30, 2007 7:14 am

Where's Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Dr Zarkov when you need them?

Hexagons on Saturn? This stinks of a plot by one Ming the Merciless!

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 12:14 am

Batman wrote:I can see Maya not getting the reference but you 'believe' it's from 2001? I weep for humanity. Well, LA anyway.
And I hate to tell you Josh but you are NOT an extraterrestrial.
Besides by the time (if ever) humanity makes up its collective mind on who is our leader you probably died of old age. Assuming a sufficient fraction of humanity survives the process to make the endeavour worthwhile in the first place.

I was referring to the aliens who make these hexagons. I mean, if I met them that's what I'd say right off.

So what is it a reference from?

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 2:30 am

It's from 2001. TMA-1 stands for "Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 1" which was what the monolith found on the moon was dubbed by the yanks.

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 6:55 am

Okay, yeah, you guys know how many years it's been since I read 2001?

...

...

...

...

Okay, finished doing the math. Sixteen years.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 11:56 am

I read it only once, and it was back in high school. Not-quite ten years.

For some reason, unnecessary, trivial and frankly worthless pieces of information get stuck in my head, like TMA-1 being a 2001 reference.

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 12:32 pm

Stofsk wrote:I read it only once, and it was back in high school. Not-quite ten years.

For some reason, unnecessary, trivial and frankly worthless pieces of information get stuck in my head, like TMA-1 being a 2001 reference.

I always felt the book was somewhat dull, and the movie was agonizingly dull, myself.

But god, don't ever read 3001. Beyond shameless cashing in on the franchise, I don't get what the hell that book was intended to be about.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 2:42 pm

Petrosjko wrote: I always felt the book was somewhat dull, and the movie was agonizingly dull, myself.

I don't really remember the book (other than it happening around Saturn instead of Jupiter, which is why I brought it up in the first place) but during the scenes were something actually happened the movie was pretty interesting IMHO. A pity those only made up a fraction of the bloody thing.
And I got the same problem as Stofsk. I can't for life of me remember my own Valendamned phone number but useless trivia like that sticks.

But god, don't ever read 3001. Beyond shameless cashing in on the franchise, I don't get what the hell that book was intended to be about.

That novel wasn't all that bad I think. At least it had SOME relevance to the overall storyarc, unlike 2061. Which ALSO was a good book but could just as well have been set in any generic early-future low-tech universe given that its connection to 2001/2010 was limited to
a) Heywood Floyd being in it and
b) it taking place in the Jupiter/Lucifer minisystem
oh, and a passing mention of HAL/David Bowman.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 7:40 pm

I think 2001 was a dull read from what I remember, but I enjoyed the film. Hey, it's a Kubrick film, so you know its pacing isn't going to be the quickest, but it's just beautiful at times.

Destructionator XV · Post by **Destructionator XV** » Sun Apr 01, 2007 1:54 pm

The film is pretty awesome. One of my favourite scenes in all cinema is right at the end of the dawn of man scene to the ship docking. The Strauss waltz is beautiful, the space details pretty accurate, and it just looked pretty. And of course, the symbolism of the transition of the bone to the satellite is brilliant.

Some will say they spend 8 minutes showing the ship dock, but it was an awesome 8 minutes.

The stargate sequence was the only part of the film I didn't really like.

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