{"id":616845,"date":"2026-09-07T03:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T03:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/616845\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T03:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T03:16:10","slug":"saturns-south-pole-is-apparently-decagon-shaped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/616845\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturn\u2019s South Pole Is Apparently Decagon-Shaped"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Saturn'sSaturn\u2019s north pole captured by Cassini in 2013. (Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SSI\/CICLOPS\/Kevin M. Gill<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Although some would argue that the hexagon is the bestagon, astronomers have discovered that Saturn appears to favor the ten-sided decagon on its south pole. This comes as its south pole has recently been confirmed to show a pattern that\u2019s oddly ten-sided, per a recent research article<\/a> by [Agust\u00edn S\u00e1nchez-Lavega] et al. in Science Advances.<\/p>\n

Because Saturn is a gas giant, this naturally isn\u2019t some gigantic planet-sized rock formation, but rather an interesting wave phenomenon in this massive gas bubble. The hexagon shape<\/a> on its north pole had been known about for a while already, so it is perhaps not too surprising to find something similar on its south pole.<\/p>\n

These shapes are generally the result of standing waves within a polar vortex<\/a>, through the interaction of waves in Saturn\u2019s atmosphere. For the north pole hexagon, the formation is driven by an intense eastward jet, but no similar wave had been reported for the planet\u2019s south pole.<\/p>\n

While in this paper a decagon shape is identified based on multiple observations, they postulate that it\u2019s due to a meandering wave in the area rather than a jet as at the other pole. This clearly doesn\u2019t make this wave pattern as obvious as the one at the north pole, but it provides another fascinating insight into fluid dynamics scaled up to a planetary gas giant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturn\u2019s north pole captured by Cassini in 2013. (Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SSI\/CICLOPS\/Kevin M. Gill) Although some would argue that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-616845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}