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n2doc

(47,953 posts)
Mon Jul 21, 2014, 09:55 AM Jul 2014

The Hexagon



Vortex and Rings

The Cassini spacecraft captures three magnificent sights at once: Saturn's north polar vortex and hexagon along with its expansive rings.
The hexagon, which is wider than two Earths, owes its appearance to the jet stream that forms its perimeter. The jet stream forms a six-lobed, stationary wave which wraps around the north polar regions at a latitude of roughly 77 degrees North.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 37 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on April 2, 2014 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.2 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 43 degrees. Image scale is 81 miles (131 kilometers) per pixel.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/imagedetails/index.cfm?imageId=5057
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CBGLuthier

(12,723 posts)
1. Great Image. Makes me think of Jack Chalker's Well World series
Mon Jul 21, 2014, 10:02 AM
Jul 2014

A strange fun series that let Chalker explore his passion for body shape changing. The well world itself was an experiment where the entire planet was divided into hexes, each hex having a different ecosystem, dominant life form, even differing abilities for technology.

Enthusiast

(50,983 posts)
4. Do we currently have a satisfactory explanation as to why there is a polar hexagon on Saturn?
Mon Jul 21, 2014, 04:25 PM
Jul 2014

Last edited Mon Jul 21, 2014, 04:59 PM - Edit history (1)

It seems extremely weird to me.

Enthusiast

(50,983 posts)
6. I was hoping they would say,
Mon Jul 21, 2014, 05:04 PM
Jul 2014

"We suspect that Saturn and the other gas giants represent an exotic life form that we are not yet intelligent enough to understand."

I kid.

hunter

(38,264 posts)
7. If I was building an interstellar space travel portal it might look like Saturn.
Mon Jul 21, 2014, 11:43 PM
Jul 2014

The rings, the hexagon... Maybe you fly into the "eye" of the polar vortex and pop out the eye of some other Saturn light years distant.

Ah well, it would make a good story.

Inside the vortex:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn's_hexagon

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