Scientists discover a persistent hexagonal storm around Saturn's north pole and a new decadal storm, as well as a unique planet orbiting a star in just 14 hours, expanding our understanding of planetary atmospheric phenomena.
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Polygonal storms on Saturn are rare atmospheric phenomena that were first observed in the 1980s, and recent studies help understand the dynamics of the planet's atmosphere.
A hexagonal storm (known as Saturn's hexagon or Saturn's hexagon) is a continuous hexagonal cloud pattern around Saturn's north pole.
The hexagonal storm, about 32,000 km wide, was discovered for the first time in 1988, and despite decades of observation, a similar structure has not been seen anywhere else on Saturn until now.
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As for the newly discovered decadal storm (which is a ten-sided cloud pattern), its width is about 167,820 km, and the length of each of its ten sides is about 16,782 km.
“This is an unusual atmospheric phenomenon that helps us advance our understanding of meteorology in general, and tells us that the hexagon is not as unique a feature as previously thought,” said Agustín Sanchez-La Vega, a planetary scientist at the University of the Basque Country in Spain and lead author of the study.
In the new study, scientists analyzed recent images of Saturn taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Due to the tilt of Saturn's axis, the southern hemisphere was not visible from Earth between 2012 and 2023, and in 2023, Hubble images revealed the decadal shape to scientists for the first time.
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“It was definitely a surprise,” Sanchez-La Vega said, noting that he and his team had been searching for a polygonal formation in the south to no avail.
The decan moves slowly, taking about 800 days to complete one revolution around Saturn. Previous research suggests that the hexagon in the north arises from an atmospheric easterly jet stream that flows in a curved path near the North Pole, where small perturbations in the stream cause it to bend into a hexagonal shape.
Likewise, the team's computer simulation suggests that the decagon was formed by a zigzag wave trapped by a curved jet stream, but unlike the hexagon, the decagon has different degrees of brightness between its sides, which could mean it is still developing.
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Sanchez-La Vega said scientists need to understand how the decadal shape will evolve in the coming years, and whether it will become unstable and disintegrate, or become more stable with increasing solar radiation that will peak at 60 degrees south latitude in 2032. They also want to get a more detailed understanding of the three-dimensional structure of the clouds, fog, winds and temperatures of the decadal shape, to develop more advanced models of its formation.
The results were published on September 2 in the journal Science Advances.
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