Overview
- The ten-sided atmospheric wave was publicly reported Wednesday after a Spanish-led team led by Agustín Sánchez-Lavega published analysis in Science Advances confirming Hubble, ground-based and amateur images.
- Amateur telescope images first flagged the feature in 2023 and prompted follow-up observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope that traced the pattern back to 2023.
- The decagon sits near 60° south, appears at multiple altitudes as a vertically layered wave, and travels eastward at about 10 km/h while the underlying jet stream reaches roughly 420 km/h.
- Researchers tested formation scenarios, including influence from a nearby ~4,000 km anticyclone dubbed a Red Spot, but multiple simulations failed to recreate the observed ten-sided pattern exactly.
- Scientists will continue multi-wavelength, professional and amateur monitoring to see whether the decagon stabilizes, evolves or breaks up and to compare it with Saturn’s long-lived north-pole hexagon to learn about giant-planet weather.