Hoping for a Hex
As northern winter ends on Saturn and the Cassini spacecraft's view of the north pole improves, the swirls and eddies visible until now only in the south are gradually coming into view in the northern hemisphere.
Scientists will be looking for the north polar hexagon that was seen by Voyager. The hexagon was a jet stream, deflected by a storm into a six-lobed pattern, that circled the planet at 76 degrees north latitude. This picture shows extensive storm activity and gives scientists hope that the hexagon is still there.
The shadows of the rings of Saturn cut across the lower part of the image.
The image was taken in polarized infrared light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 8, 2005, at a distance of approximately 3.2 million kilometers (2 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 37 kilometers (23 miles) per pixel.
Target Saturn Rings Saturn
Target Type Ring Planet
Mission Cassini-Huygens Voyager
Host Type Orbiter Flyby Spacecraft
Extra Keywords Atmosphere, Grayscale, Infrared, Shadow, Storm, Visual