Saturn's 'Hexagon' Mega Storm Seen By Cassini

A six-sided storm on Saturn that contains a huge hurricane has been pictured in the highest resolution yet by a Nasa spacecraft.

Saturn's unique 'hexagon' storm. Pic: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Hampton

The hexagonal jet stream, which centres around the north pole and is thought to be unique in the solar system, is at least 30,000km (18,640 miles) wide - more than twice the width of the Earth.

The weather system was photographed by Cassini, which was launched in 2004 to begin a close-up study of Saturn and its moons.

A hurricane swirls around the centre. Pic: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Hampton

It trained its cameras on the polar region for 10 hours, allowing scientists to analyse, in false colour, the movement of the planet's cloud structures.

At the centre of the hexagon is a rotating hurricane more than 50 times bigger than those typically seen on Earth.

The storm packs winds of about 200mph. Pic: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Experts believe it could have been battering the planet for hundreds of years.

Countless smaller vortices are swept along with the jet stream, propelled by winds of about 200mph (322kph) "as if on a racetrack", a Nasa spokesman said.

Cassini zoomed in on the hurricane in April. Pic: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Andrew Ingersoll, a member of the Cassini imaging team at the California Institute of Technology, said: "The hexagon is just a current of air, and weather features out there that share similarities to this are notoriously turbulent and unstable.

"A hurricane on Earth typically lasts a week, but this has been here for decades and, who knows, maybe centuries."

Earth appears as a tiny dot in an earlier photo. Pic: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Unlike on Earth, where weather patterns are interrupted by mountains and ice caps, Saturn's hexagon has remained relatively intact.

It is thought this longevity is caused by a lack of solid landforms on the planet, which is essentially a giant ball of gas.

The images are the latest in a series of spectacular photographs taken by Cassini.

In October, the spacecraft zoomed in on the lakes of Titan, one of Saturn's 53 confirmed moons, while in April, it pictured meteors streaking across Saturn's rings.

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