Discover the cosmosEach day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Explanation:Why are Saturn’s poles geometric?Saturn’s North Pole has been known to be surrounded by ahexagonal cloud sincediscovery in 1987in data taken by NASA’sVoyager spacecrafts, which quickly flew past theringed worldin the early 1980s.
Now, recent observations of Saturn by the Hubble Space Telescopereveal a slightly different geometric cloud pattern around the South Pole: adecagon.
The geometric boundaries arepossibly causedby waves when the fast-moving gas away from the poles interacts with slower-moving gas closer to the poles.
In thefeatured image compositeby the Hubble taken last year, the South Pole of Saturnis marked by an X and surrounded by bands of circulating clouds.
Thedecagonappears most prominent in the dark inner regions.
Thenorthern hexagonhas proven stable for over 40 years, while the stability of the southern decagon will surely remain atopic of research.
APOD’s main NASA site ismoving:Fromapod.nasa.govtoscience.nasa.gov/apod Tomorrow’s picture:open space