Scientists are still trying to figure out what causes the hexagon, where it gets and expels its energy and how it has stayed so organized for so long. They plan to search the new images for clues, taking an especially close look at the newly identified waves that radiate from the corners of the hexagon — where the jet takes its hardest turns — and the multi-walled structure that extends to the top of Saturn’s cloud layer in each of the hexagon’s six sides. Scientists are also particularly intrigued by a large dark spot that appeared in a different position in a previous infrared image from Cassini. In the latest images, the spot appears in the 2 o’clock position.

Because Saturn does not have land masses or oceans on its surface to complicate weather the way Earth does, its conditions should give scientists a more elementary model to study the physics of circulation patterns and atmosphere, said Kevin Baines, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who has studied the hexagon with Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer.

“Now that we can see undulations and circular features instead of blobs in the hexagon, we can start trying to solve some of the unanswered questions about one of the most bizarre things we’ve ever seen in the solar system,” Baines said. “Solving these unanswered questions about the hexagon will help us answer basic questions about weather that we’re still asking about our own planet.”

The hexagon pattern is famously found in snowflakes, honeycombs, and other crystals in nature.  In ancient magickal traditions the hexagram, made up of two equilateral triangles, is the Seal of Solomon (later called the Star of David).  The six lines of the hexagram divide the figure into seven parts, and Saturn is the seventh planet.

In Masonic rites, the Star of David is associated with Saturn worship and talismans dedicated to the god Saturn held a hexagram according to Israel Regardie, an occult practitioner of the early 20th century.  And Lesser and Greater Banishing RItuals of the Hexagram are found in many magickal traditions.

Somewhere along the way Saturn became corrupted as Satan which didn’t help Saturn’s reputation much.  But the synchronicity of Saturn’s association with the hexagram and the fact that Saturn is itself embedded in a hexagram is pretty amazing.