Uploads from Dr. Becky

Currently Playing: A decagon on Saturn?! #shorts

I SQUEALED WITH JOY when I saw the news about the discovery of a decagon at Saturn's south pole! 🪐 A 10 sided shaped storm raging around Saturn’s south pole, which joins the other pointy shape storm on Saturn: the hexagon at its north pole. The hexagon was first spotted back in the 1980s when Voyager flew past Saturn. And it’s been there in every observation we’ve took since, and always while Cassini was in orbit around Saturn. And despite searching for a similar feature at Saturn’s south pole all those years as well, we’ve never found anything. Now if you’re thinking, wait how do we see Saturn’s south pole, because we look at it and see it from the side. But Saturn has seasons like Earth does, its axis it spins around is tilted, so as it orbits the Sun sometimes its northern hemisphere is pointed more towards the Sun, and vice versa. In the past few Earth years, the seasons have switched on Saturn with the south pole now pointing towards the Sun, and us here on Earth. It spins on its axis every 10 hours, so if we observe it for long enough, it spins to show us its entire southern hemisphere. And that’s how Sánchez-Lavega and collaborators managed to get this image with the Hubble Space Telescope revealing the decagon, this 10 sided shaped cloud pattern at Saturn’s south pole. And this is so incredibly cool that we’re alive to have witnessed this thing forming, that could now be a feature on Saturn for over 50 years, just like the hexagon. So more observations are going to be needed to understand this better, more Hubble observations to see what happens over time and if this continues to evolve or settles into a long-lived decagon pattern. But also with JWST, as observing with infrared light lets you pierce further down into the atmosphere so you can see how far this pattern goes, which will hopefully give us some more clues for how this decagon swirling around Saturn’s south pole has formed. #saturn #planets #space #hexagonsarethebestagons Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: martino.freelance@gmail.com Video produced by Marina Hui & Dr Becky Smethurst --- 📚 My book, "A Brief History of Black Holes", out NOW in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky --- 👕 My merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/ --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive --- 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars. http://drbecky.uk.com