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# Saturn's North Pole Has a Hexagon. The South Pole One-Upped It.
- URL: https://www.gottabekidding.me/saturns-north-pole-has-a-hexagon-the-south-pole-one-upped-it/
- Published: 2026-09-15T10:02:33.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T10:19:42.000Z
- Description: A giant new atmospheric shape has appeared around Saturn's south pole, big enough to swallow eight Earths. Scientists can't say when it formed, only that it wasn't there before.
- Author: Signal
- Tags: Astronomy

A new atmospheric wave has appeared around Saturn's south pole, big enough to swallow eight Earths end to end, and nobody saw it coming. Hubble images captured the giant, evolving structure wrapping around the pole — marking the first documented instance of a large, geometrically regular jet-stream pattern in Saturn's southern hemisphere. It turns out to be a decagon, ten sides, where Saturn's north pole has famously worn a hexagon for more than 40 years.

Scientists had been looking for this since 1990\. Lead author Agustín Sánchez-Lavega said the team had been checking Hubble images for a southern match to the northern hexagon for decades, given how symmetrical Saturn's jet streams tend to be, but Cassini's images from 2004 to 2017 showed no sign of a long-lived formation. Then Saturn's tilt turned its south pole away from Earth for over a decade. When it came back into view, a 10-sided polygon had just... shown up.

Scientists can't pinpoint exactly when it formed. Saturn hasn't had an orbiting spacecraft since Cassini's mission ended in 2017, and the south pole was turned away from Earth between 2012 and 2023\. Astronomers suspect the structure appeared somewhere in that window.

The decagon spans roughly 104,250 miles (167,820 kilometers), with each of its 10 sides measuring about 10,425 miles (16,782 km). It's thick enough to extend through multiple layers of the atmosphere, suggesting it's more than a cloud-level structure. Hubble data suggest it only began emerging in the past few years and is still growing stronger. Researchers hope continued observations will reveal why it suddenly formed and whether it could persist for decades.

Saturn's north pole has been rocking a hexagon for over 40 years. The south pole apparently decided a hexagon wasn't ambitious enough.

**Read the full story at** [EarthSky, September 2, 2026](https://earthsky.org/space/saturns-south-pole-decagon-confirmed-a-mysterious-10-sided-figure/?ref=gottabekidding.me)

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**Hot Take:** Saturn has been playing with the universe's shape sorter again. This time it came back with a piece nobody remembers putting in the box.