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| Saturn's hexagon/ credit image :NASA |
The James Webb Space Telescope has made an intriguing discovery of unusual "dark beads" situated above a four-armed star pattern in Saturn's atmosphere.
These unexpected structures are unlike anything that scientists have previously encountered, leaving them puzzled about their nature.The peculiar features were identified by the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) as it examined the gas giant's atmosphere above the hexagonal storm that swirls at the north pole of the planet.
Astronomers anticipated observing emissions across broad bands of the infrared spectrum in the atmospheric layers above the vortex. However, what they found were dark, bead-like formations—spaced far apart yet potentially linked—drifting slowly within the charged plasma of the planet's ionosphere, along with a lopsided star-shaped structure in the stratosphere below."The results came as a complete surprise," stated Tom Stallard, a professor of astronomy at Northumbria University in the U.K.
"These features were completely unexpected and, at present, are completely unexplained."he added
Saturn's Hexagon was initially discovered in 1980 by NASA's Voyager spacecraft and was captured in remarkable detail by the Cassini spacecraft, which orbited the planet from 2004 to 2017.
It appears as an 18,000-mile-wide (29,000 kilometers) six-sided tower swirling above the planet's surface, completing a full rotation approximately every 10 hours.
Scientists theorize that the hexagon is influenced by a jet stream that encircles the planet's pole, and its distinctive shape is attributed to the characteristics of the gases in Saturn's atmosphere.
However, the precise reasons for this flow and shape remain uncertain, due to the very weak emissions originating from that region.
Extensive research is still needed to identify this characteristics and scientist are still learning to gather more data that can prove that action in Saturn's atmosphere.