Saturn’s 25,000km hexagon

This image (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona) from Cassini’s infrared camera shows a hexagonal formation close to Saturn’s North pole (see this post for a similarly stunning image of Saturn’s South pole). This pattern, so large that four Earths could fit inside, has endured for at least 26 years. It is so staggeringly beautiful and awesome that I feel close to tears.

Comment posted by Phil Wilson (from vox)

Further to this, it’s hard to beat this post at Scientific American’s blog, from which I take the following quote.

Keeping in mind Richard Dawkin’s observation
that the universe does not owe us meaning, seeing this atmospheric
oddity conjures up other phenomena in the solar system and on Earth
that coincidentally take on precise shapes and forms we normally
consider of only anthropomorphic origin. . . . [A]lthough gas blowing out of a supernova in the shape of a
ring or fan stimulates the imagination, it flatters, rather than
challenges our view of just what we can create and what a gas cloud
cannot.