Saturn is farther from the sun than Earth is. Scientists had to wait a few more years to see the hexagon in visible wavelengths of light because Saturn’s seasons last longer than those on Earth. Twenty years later, when Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004 during Saturn’s northern winter, the hexagon was in shadow. Scientists first observed the six-sided jet stream when the two Voyager spacecraft passed by Saturn in the early 1980s, but the Voyager flybys' geometries prevented the spacecraft from capturing the entire monstrous hexagon in a single image from above. Ever since Cassini captured its first images of Saturn’s north polar region, scientists and the public alike have been fascinated by one of the planet’s most prominent idiosyncrasies: the hexagon.
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