Decagon on Saturn’s South Pole (Single Filter)

A single wavelength of light from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 provides a particularly clear view of the 10-sided atmospheric wave discovered encircling Saturn’s south pole. The feature, labeled “decagon,” is embedded within one of Saturn’s powerful jet streams. The wave is centered around 63 degrees south latitude, and its apparent position shifts slightly depending on the wavelength of light observed. Observations from Hubble at different wavelengths of light reveal the structure at different altitudes. Hubble observations also show that the feature was present as early as 2023 and has become more pronounced over subsequent years.

The “X” and dashed circle in the image represents where data was not captured by Hubble.

About the colours

These images were acquired by the WFC3/UVIS instrument on Hubble. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to a monochromatic (grayscale) image. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F395N, Green: F502N, Red: F631N

About the data

These images were created with Hubble data from proposal: 17843 (A. Simon).