Hubble Telescope discovers strange ten-sided shape on Saturn

Saturn continues to surprise astronomers.

Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope captured images of a massive, 10-sided atmospheric wave, or 'decagon,' circling the planet's south pole.

This discovery, published in Science Advances in September 2026, is particularly exciting because it is the first time such a geometric jet pattern has been seen in Saturn’s southern hemisphere.

While Saturn’s north pole has featured a famous 6-sided hexagon for decades, the southern decagon is a brand new phenomenon.

The decagon is enormous, stretching over 104,000 miles, and represents a complex, vertically extended wave that persists deep into the atmosphere.

Lead researcher Agustín Sánchez-Lavega and his team, supported by amateur astronomers, are now studying how this feature evolves.

The unexpected appearance of the decagon challenges previous theories that the northern hexagon was a unique anomaly.