APOD: 2022 July 24 - Saturn in Infrared from Cassini

Good morning, Rallypoint, and welcome to the July 24th edition of Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD): "Saturn in Infrared from Cassini." This was one of the last APODs published from Cassini before the mission ended in 2017. First shared in April 2017, we see the Northern Hexagon, clouds, rings, and shadows (from the rings) rendered in infrared. The Sun would be at the lower right off camera. Here's how NASA's Science Directorate describes Saturn's unique North Pole:

"Why would clouds form a hexagon on Saturn? Nobody is sure. Originally discovered during the Voyager flybys of Saturn in the 1980s, nobody has ever seen anything like it anywhere else in the Solar System. Acquiring its first sunlit views of far northern Saturn in late 2012, the Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera recorded this stunning, false-color image of the ringed planet's north pole. The composite of near-infrared image data results in red hues for low clouds and green for high ones, giving the Saturnian cloudscape a vivid appearance. This and similar images show the stability of the hexagon even 20+ years after Voyager. Movies of Saturn's North Pole show the cloud structure maintaining its hexagonal structure while rotating. Unlike individual clouds appearing like a hexagon on Earth, the Saturn cloud pattern appears to have six well defined sides of nearly equal length. Four Earths could fit inside the hexagon."