Saturn's north polar cyclone and hexagon at depth revealed by Cassini/VIMS

A high-speed cyclonic vortex centered on the north pole of Saturn has been revealed by the visual-infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) onboard the Cassini-Huygens Orbiter, thus showing that the tropospheres of both poles of Saturn are occupied by cyclonic vortices with winds exceeding 135 m/s. High-spatial-resolution (~200 km per pixel) images acquired predominantly under night-time conditions during Saturn's polar winter-using a thermal wavelength of 5.1 ??m to obtain time-lapsed imagery of discrete, deep-seated (>2.1-bar) cloud features viewed in silhouette against Saturn's internally generated thermal glow-show a classic cyclonic structure, with prograde winds exceeding 135 m/s at its maximum near 88.3?? (planetocentric) latitude, and decreasing to