Jupiter has its Great Red Spot – Saturn, in contrast, has its enormous hexagon. For a long time, a six-sided structure with a diameter of 29,000 km (18,000 miles) has been rotating around Saturn’s north pole. Thus, the hexagon is considerably larger than Jupiter’s spot, which is only 16,000 km (10,000 miles) across and more than twice as large as the whole Earth. The hexagon was first discovered in 1981 by Voyager 1 (photographed in infrared in the image below). Starting in 2006, the Cassini probe, operated by NASA and ESA, made it possible to take a detailed look…

The fact that a planet – like the Earth – has only one single companion, is rather unusual in our Solar System. With 79 moons, the giant planet Jupiter previously had the most moons. Now, it’s been surpassed by Saturn, which changed from having 62 to 82 moons in one fell swoop. The new moons around the ringed planet were discovered using the Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Each of the newcomers has a diameter of about 5 km (3 miles). Seventeen of the twenty are orbiting Saturn in the wrong direction, in what is called a…