Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC) and the OPAL Team

Anyone who has ever peered at Saturn through a small telescope is immediately enticed by its elegant rings, which make the far-flung planet one of the most exotic-looking, opulent worlds in the solar system.

The latest view of Saturn from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures exquisite details of the ring system—which looks like a phonograph record with grooves that represent detailed structure within the rings—and atmospheric details that once could only be captured by spacecraft visiting the distant world.

One such intriguing feature is the long-lasting hexagon-shaped structure circling the planet's north pole. It is a mysterious six-sided pattern caused by a high-speed jet stream. NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft first discovered the "hexagon" during its flyby in 1981. The hexagon is so large that four Earths could fit inside its boundaries. (There is no similar structure at Saturn's south pole.)

Other features, however, are not as long lasting. A large storm in the north polar region spotted by Hubble last year has disappeared. Smaller, convective storms—called super "thunderheads"—such as the one just above the center of the planet's image, also come and go.

Saturn's appearance changes with its seasons, which occur because Saturn's equator is tilted 27 degrees with respect to the plane of its orbit around the Sun. The Earth, similarly, has seasons because our planet is tilted by about 23.5 degrees, but seasons on Saturn last more than seven years. This new Saturn image was taken during summer in the planet's northern hemisphere.

The amber colors of the planet in this image come from summer smog-like hazes, produced in photochemical reactions driven by solar ultraviolet radiation. Below the haze lie clouds of ammonia ice crystals, as well as deeper, unseen lower-level clouds of ammonium hydrosulfide and water. Saturn's banded structure is caused by alternating winds that result in clouds at different altitudes at each latitude.

Saturn's trademark ring

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2019/news-2019-43

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

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