The Hexagonal Storm of Saturn

A circle or a Sphere is the most common shape that you will find in the Universe. Anything else just feels odd. Imagine a triangle shaped Planet. Sounds weird, right? But, something weird is happening on the north pole of the planet Saturn.

A massive hexagon-shaped storm.

Image Reference: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute. Saturn’s North Polar Hexagon. Captured by Cassini spacecraft, 2013. Retrieved from NASA Image Library.

Earth’s surface has mountains, valleys, rivers, and other land features. So, when there’s a storm on the surface of Earth, the shape is indeterministic. However, Saturn is made completely of Gas. This allows its polar vortex to remain strikingly symmetrical, sculpted only by atmospheric forces.

In 1988, Voyager 2 spacecraft by NASA captured the shape of storm on the North Pole of the planet Saturn. It was hexagon in shape (see image below). Later NASA’s Cassini captured high resolution images, and found out that it was about 32,000 km across in length, with winds of hydrogen and ammonia racing at 500 km/h speed. Some swirls rotate clockwise, others counterclockwise, forming a dynamic system that plunges nearly 200 miles into Saturn’s atmosphere.

Scientists are still unraveling how it formed. One theory, proposed by Harvard researchers Jeremy Bloxham and Rakesh Yadav, suggests that smaller vortices deep in Saturn’s atmosphere pinch and interact with a powerful jet stream, forcing the storm into its six-sided shape. 

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References:

1. Wikipedia contributors. Saturn’s hexagon. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved February 24, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn%27s_hexagon