NASA's Hubble Telescope discovered that Saturn's south pole has a decagonal atmosphere structure that is larger than the north pole hexagon

The north pole of the solar system planet Saturn is famous for its famous hexagonal cloud structure. However, the Hubble Space Telescope of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) also discovered a geometric atmospheric structure at the south pole of Saturn, and it is decagonal.

According to press releases from the Associated Press and NASA, the huge "decagonal" atmospheric fluctuation structure at the south pole of Saturn observed by the Hubble Space Telescope is located in a strong jet stream of Saturn. It is larger and more unstable than the hexagonal structure at the north pole of Saturn discovered in the 1980s. It extends through multiple layers of the atmosphere, showing that it is not just a cloud feature, but an atmospheric structure that extends in a vertical direction. Saturn's north polar hexagon is also located in the jet, but is actually almost stationary, while the south polar decagon is moving eastward at about 10 kilometers per hour, and this structure may still be developing, but its current length is more than 10,000 miles (about 16,700 kilometers) on a single side.

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This study, jointly published by NASA, Spanish and British researchers on the 2nd in the journal Science Advances, received ground observation images from various places in 2024 from the astronomical observation website managed by the University of the Basque Country in Spain. It was first noticed that there is a vague undulating band structure at the south pole of Saturn. Further images taken by the ground observation station in 2025 strongly pointed to the existence of this structure. The researchers went back to search for Hubble observation data with higher image resolution to confirm this decagonal structure.

Agustin Sanchez-Lavega, the lead author of the report and astronomer at the University of the Basque Country in Spain, said that due to the symmetry of Saturn's north and south pole jet systems, astronomers have been looking for whether Saturn's south pole also has a structure corresponding to the north pole hexagon since 1990. "Hubble's data confirmed the existence of this structure dating back to 2023." Researchers speculate that this decagon may have formed between 2017 and 2023.

Sanchez-LaVega said that this discovery shows that Saturn's north hexagon, which was considered "unique" in the past, may not be as special as originally thought. By comparing the two structures of Saturn's south and north poles, scientists can better understand the weather patterns of this gas giant planet.

Planets with atmospheres in the solar system will experience disturbances that can cause atmospheric fluctuations, but currently only Saturn has such a polygonal structure. "Saturn can still surprise us," Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester, UK, who participated in the study, said in a statement.