New images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have revealed that Saturn’s puzzling hexagonal storm has changed colour.
READ MORE: NASA shares beautiful photo of Saturn’s moons among its rings
In 2012, Cassini imaged the storm — located on the planet’s north pole — and revealed it to be a beautiful soft blue colour. These new images, however, show that the storm’s colour is now golden.
Scientists are trying to determine the cause of the transformation, which could be due to the changing seasons on the gas giant. In particular, it could be a result of increases in photochemical hazes in the atmosphere as the planet approaches the summer solstice which will occur in May 2017.
As for the storm itself, scientists believe the storm is created by six different jet streams — such as that found here on Earth.
“The hexagon is just a current of air, and weather features out there that share similarities to this are notoriously turbulent and unstable,” said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “A hurricane on Earth typically lasts a week, but this has been here for decades — and who knows — maybe centuries.”
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