Anillos y hexágonos en Saturno-Hexagons in Saturn

Increíble: un rasgo en el polo norte de Saturno, visto ya hace más de dos décadas por las sondas Voyager 1 y 2, ¡está aún allí! Es una formación de estructura hexagonal, que semeja una celda de un panal de abejas.
Se mueve sobre ese vórtice, como sucede con los vientos en el polo terrestre, sólo que aquí el movimiento es circular y en el planeta de los anillos es hexagonal.
“Es un rasgo extraño”, dijo Kevin Baines, miembro del equipo que maneja el espectrómetro de infrarrojos de la sonda Cassini, que tomó la imagen en octubre pasado y que sólo se dio a conocer esta semana.
El sistema se extiende unos 100 kilómetros adentro de la atmósfera del planeta. El hexágono mide unos 25.000 kilómetros, por lo que podría albergar casi 4 Tierras.
Esa formación no puede ser vista por las cámaras visuales de Cassini, dado que el sitio se encuentra bajo el invierno, una extensa noche que dura... ¡15 años!

An hexagon in Saturn

Man has gone recently to other planets (less than 40 years ago). Surprises are common. Cassini spacecraft, visiting Saturn, found another one. This is our story today.
The following paragraphs wee taken from news released by Nasa team.
An six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists. Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged the feature over two decades ago. The fact that it has appeared in Cassini images indicates that it is a long-lived feature. A second hexagon, significantly darker than the brighter historical feature, is also visible in the Cassini pictures. The spacecraft's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer is the first instrument to capture the entire hexagon feature in one image.
"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team.
The hexagon is similar to Earth's polar vortex, which has winds blowing in a circular pattern around the polar region. On Saturn, the vortex has a hexagonal rather than circular shape. The hexagon is nearly 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it.
The new images taken in thermal-infrared light show the hexagon extends much deeper down into the atmosphere than previously expected, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) below the cloud tops.
The Saturn north pole hexagon has not been visible to Cassini's visual cameras, because it's winter in that area, so the hexagon is under the cover of the long polar night, which lasts about 15 years. As winter wanes over the next two years, the feature may become visible to the visual cameras.