The north pole of Saturn is home to a hexagonal storm, appropriately known as "Saturn's Hexagon". Exact dimensions are unknown but from observations it seems to be 29000km wide at its widest point, and 300km high, with each side length being 2000km longer than the diameter of Earth.

It was discovered in 1987 by David Godfrey upon reviewing data from the Voyager mission (both Voyager probes). It was then revisited by Cassini in 2006.

Depending on the relative position of Earth-Saturn, the hexagon can be seen from Earth. At the time of publishing, Saturn is currently near-perfectly side-on, so no chance, we'll have to wait for a good while until the pole tilts further towards us.

Between 2012 and 2016, the hexagon changed colour from blueish-green to something more of a yellow ochre. This is possibly due to the pole being exposed to sunlight as it changes in position relative to the sun (seasons).

Great question. Different people have different ideas floating around. None of those involve aliens, conscious entities or anomalies, or indeed giant space bees.

Okay there's some serious fluid dynamics happening here, and I'm not great with fluid dynamics but I'll try and paraphrase. At a certain latitude towards Saturn's north pole there is a fairly sudden and large change in wind-speed in Saturn's atmosphere. There are a lot of factors that could contribute to this: Saturn's curvature, rotational velocity, atmospheric composition... well actually those are the only ones I can think of right now, but either way, the physical factors of Saturn align "just so" so that there can be a sudden change in wind speed at a certain latitude. Lab tests have been conducted to try and recreate the hexagonal storm in circular tanks of fluid with success, however other shapes also formed with 3-8 sides, with the most common being 6. When fast moving fluid running parallel to slow moving fluid interact, they create vortexes. The regions with different speeds "stick" together due to friction. The fast moving fluid tries to "drag" the slow fluid along with it, but doesn't have the power to do so, so the slow fluid "drags" the fast fluid back on itself, forming a vortex. That was a hideously oversimplified explanation but this is a Steam guide not a dissertation so I can't say I'm too concerned about using the "technically" correct wording. Anyway back to the point, when these vortexes form, they change where the boundary for fast-slow fluid is until it reaches a stable latitude, which is where the shapes start to form. The properties of the fluids have to be just right otherwise these stable shapes cannot form. which is why we don't see clear shapes on the poles of Jupiter for example.
(I'm just going to move onto "source: I'm making an educated guess" for a moment. I would imagine the vortexes will resonate in a certain way which gives rise to different shapes? If someone qualified is reading this, please let me know.)
Some scientists disagree with this proposal as the lab experiments showed some effects that don't appear to be present in Saturn's hexagon, but hey that's how science works, keep iterating theories until everyone agrees, so it's still being worked on.

That brings us to a theory which I have to say I prefer the sound of. This is the idea that any planet that hosts a storm where the storm winds are moving in the opposite direction of the winds outside the storm can form a polygonal shape. Big brain mathematician Andy Ingersoll discovered this in 2020. And look, I said I was bad with fluid dynamics so if you want to read the paper, go ahead, but I will TRY and paraphrase it. When there are 2 winds running parallel to each other, but in the opposite direction, the difference in velocity between the two winds is very large. When storms meet that both are surrounded by contra-rotating winds, in layman's terms, they reject each other. Think of it like poles of a magnet repelling each other, and now ignore that analogy because this is completely different, but the effect is the same. The storms remain independent instead of merging together. If we take multiple similar storms and let them meet, they will space themselves apart evenly as they equally reject each other. Ever notice how when you stack equally sized spheres, they self-arrange into hexagon-ish shapes? When maintaining equal distance from each other, circles self-arrange into hexagons.


Jupiter's poles consist of multiple cyclones self-arranged like stacked spheres, but Saturn's has one BIG hexagonal formation. Why? This... leads to an unfulfilling answer. We don't know, but based off the previous information, there are 2 resolutions that relate to instabilities in Saturn's atmosphere: barotropic, and baroclinic instability. These relate to the way the temperature and pressure of fluids interact to form eddies.

After establishing the way discs self-arrange, and contra-rotating winds reject each other, we feel so close to having an answer but don't have one firmly set. If you want to learn some fluid dynamics and figure out how that combined with barotropic or baroclinic instability can form a hexagon, and more importantly, be able to prove it, then be my guest, I'm sure there's a prize waiting for you somewhere at the end of it.