Saturn grew a 10-sided wave at the south pole
Published on HivePostify by @vixmemon · Sun Sep 06 2026
Everybody knows the hexagon. Voyager spotted that six-sided jet around Saturn's north pole in the early 1980s, and it has sat there like a stubborn weather tattoo for more than forty years. Cassini watched it. Hubble still catches the corners when the north is tilted our way.
The south never had a matching shape. Teams looked. Cassini never found a long-lived polygon down there. Then Saturn's tilt brought the south pole back into view from Earth, and Hubble's OPAL images from 2023 through 2025 started showing something new: a decagon, a ten-sided wave sitting in a jet near 63 degrees south.
Agustín Sánchez-Lavega at the University of the Basque Country and colleagues published the find this week. The corners wobble on a 32-day cycle. The whole pattern drifts east at only about 2.5 meters per second, much slower than the jet it lives in. Amy Simon at NASA Goddard put the odd part plainly: why now, after we had never seen one?
I keep thinking about that timing. The north hexagon is old and almost boring in its stability. This southern thing looks like it is still assembling itself. If you grew up on posters of the hexagon, this is the first time the other pole has answered back, and the answer has four extra sides.
References: [Hubble tracks the new decagon](https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-tracks-new-decagon-encircling-saturns-south-pole/). [ten-sided wave on Saturn](https://physicsworld.com/a/astronomers-discover-unusual-10-sided-atmospheric-wave-on-saturn/).
Tags: #saturn#astronomy#hubble#space#science