{"id":12177,"date":"2007-03-29T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-29T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/03\/29\/mysterious-hexagon-spotted-above-saturn\/"},"modified":"2007-03-29T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-29T12:00:00","slug":"mysterious-hexagon-spotted-above-saturn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/03\/29\/mysterious-hexagon-spotted-above-saturn\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious Hexagon Spotted Above Saturn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/pages\/live\/articles\/technology\/technology.html?in_article_id=445117&#038;in_page_id=1965\">www.dailymail.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, March 28, 2007: A mysterious giant hexagon lies above Saturn&#8217;s north pole, captured by cameras on Nasa&#8217;s Cassini Orbiter. Spanning 25,000km &#8212; equivalent to the width of two planet Earths &#8212; the bizarre geometric feature appears to remain virtually still in the atmosphere as clouds swirl around it. The infra-red images show the hexagon &#8212; which contains a smaller six-sided formation &#8212; extends about 60km down into the clouds. The hexagon is similar to Earth&#8217;s polar vortex, which has winds blowing in a circular pattern around the polar region. On Saturn, the vortex has a hexagonal shape. The six-sided shape is in stark contrast to the swirling, hurricane-like vortex at Saturn&#8217;s opposite pole. The feature was first photographed more than 20 years ago by Nasa&#8217;s Voyager 1 and 2 probes, but this is the first time the hexagon has been seen in one image. The latest pictures were taken at nighttime using infra-red because the pole is currently in darkness and the red color indicates the amount of heat being generated from inside the planet.<br \/> Kevin Baines of NASA&#8217;s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: &#8220;This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides. &#8220;We&#8217;ve never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn&#8217;s thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you&#8217;d expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Be sure to see the movie from the Cassini of this very unusual planetary phenomenon, <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/mission_pages\/cassini\/multimedia\/pia09187.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.dailymail.co.uk PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, March 28, 2007: A mysterious giant hexagon lies above Saturn&#8217;s north pole, captured by cameras on Nasa&#8217;s,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}