Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                 2020 July 5

                          Saturn's Northern Hexagon
           Image Credit: NASA, ESA, JPL, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team

   Explanation: Why would clouds form a hexagon on Saturn? Nobody is sure.
   Originally discovered during the Voyager flybys of Saturn in the 1980s,
   nobody has ever seen anything like it anywhere else in the Solar
   System. Acquiring its first sunlit views of far northern Saturn in late
   2012, the Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera recorded this
   stunning, false-color image of the ringed planet's north pole. The
   composite of near-infrared image data results in red hues for low
   clouds and green for high ones, giving the Saturnian cloudscape a vivid
   appearance. This and similar images show the stability of the hexagon
   even 20+ years after Voyager. Movies of Saturn's North Pole show the
   cloud structure maintaining its hexagonal structure while rotating.
   Unlike individual clouds appearing like a hexagon on Earth, the Saturn
   cloud pattern appears to have six well defined sides of nearly equal
   length. Four Earths could fit inside the hexagon. Beyond the cloud tops
   at the upper right, arcs of the planet's eye-catching rings appear
   bright blue.

                       Tomorrow's picture: deep hunter
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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                      A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC
                             & Michigan Tech. U.

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