Saturn’s North Pole Hexagon

Saturn_hexagonA reader writes:

Any thought on THIS?

I was re-reading Lovecraft’s “A Shadow out of Time” yesterday and later in the day this odd image makes the news.

Maybe it’s an inter-planetary elder sign or maybe the “stars are right” for you know who’s return.  I think Lovecraft would have found it amusing to make it into a part of his Mythos. 

I think you’re right that Lovecraft definitely would have worked it into his mythos, if he’d known about it.

Clark Ashton Smith would have had fun with it, too, if he’d known about it when writing The Door to Saturn.

My own thoughts are these:

1) It’s very, very strange that Saturn would have a hexagonal storm at it’s north pole.

2) Maybe the Saturnian Santa Claus has a thing for geometry.

3) I expect Kara Thrace to fly out of it as part of her destiny to lead the rag-tag fleet to Earth.

MORE HERE.

(CHT to the second reader, who also spotted the Kara Thrace connection!)

The first reader also asks:

By the way,  several months ago you blogged about “the Mound” story.  It’s been many years since I’ve read it and I was wondering how you knew the exact location to have found it by the satellite images?

I discovered that the story The Mound was based on a real geological formation known as Ghost Mound, between Hydro and Binger, Oklahoma and found its latitude and longitude recorded in a list of GPS coordinates for people wanting to visit various mound formations in the area. (Here’s another source listing them.)

MORE HERE.

AND HERE.

AND HERE.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

16 thoughts on “Saturn’s North Pole Hexagon”

  1. Very interesting. It looks like a standard liquid resonance pattern produced by audio frequencies (and there are some beautiful pictures and videos of this). I wonder if Saturn was having interesting seismic tremors at the time. Other than that, I would posit maybe an EM disturbance.
    Breathtaking picture!

  4. Hm. This takes me aways back. Let me see. . . .
    Yithians! Are you tired of trudging around your city on the prehistoric deserts of Australia? Tired of being a massive conical thing-a-ma-whatsit, or a race of monstrous Martian beetle-things? Then take a break from the stress of documenting all the universe’s (universes’?) knowledge at scenic Nog’Ax-Ehe-Lophtron Arctic Saturnine Resort!
    Unlike most dead alien cities long forgotten by the younger sentient inhabitants of the Solar System which only have four or five sides (e.g. the Great City on Leng), Nog’Ax-Ehe-Lophtron has 6, count ’em *6* sides! Not only that, but it also exists in 3,287 dimensions of space! That’s 3,282 more dimensions than your average alien city!
    At Nog’Ax-Ehe-Lophtron you can experience all the thrills and chills of Yuggoth, all the zany fun and laugh-out-loud wackiness of R’lyeh, all the scenic sights and sonorous sounds of Unknown Kadath, and all the historic charm and mirth of decrepit, witch-haunted Arkham all in one place! And, since the city is dead, its original inhabitants having perished in a great calamity caused by horrid forces too great for the minds of mortal beings to comprehend, there are no crowds, and no lines! Everything is free, and for the taking! (Just avoid the pale white standing stones on the edge of town that shine with a furtive and eldritch light of their own, and the ichor-encrusted trapdoors leading down into the city’s lower levels, and you won’t have to worry about any Ancient Cosmic Horrors welling up out of the subterranean darkness to consume you in a maelstrom of terror out of some nightmare of outré things.)
    All you Yithians interested in documenting all of the cosmos’ knowledge should also check out the great library of Nog’Ax-Ehe-Lophtron (which, unlike most advanced alien libraries, uses computers to store information, and not the more sophisticated wax-tablets and vellum scrolls). Read the ancient, horrible texts that time has forgotten; the original Arabic edition of Al Azif; the complete Pnakotic Manuscripts, with new forward by author; and the rumoured book of Tek War, by William Shatner (a book none can read and retain his sanity!). Browse the source-code of the universe, and learn all its deadly secrets, backdoors and cheat codes! Look up stuff on the Nog’Ax-Ehe-Lophtron Wiki, the original Encyclopaedia that anyone can vandalise!
    Migrate en masse on over to Nog’Ax-Ehe-Lophtron today, and have the time of your life! At the Nog’Ax-Ehe-Lophtron Arctic Saturnine Resort we run rings around the competition!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111!!!!!!!!!!1111!!!///!!!!11!!!1one11!!!
    . . .
    Ahem. Now that I have that out of my system I’m off to retire to my luxurious New England residence and dream that I actually have a luxurious New England residence and am not still trapped in the body of a horrible chitinous Yaddithian wizard named Zkauba.
    [sigh]
    – Randolph Carter
    (NOTE: Yes, Nog’Ax-Ehe-Lophtron means something, when read backwards. Also, a cookie for anyone who can differentiate all the actual Lovecraftian references contained in this deranged piece of combox filler from the stuff I just made up. Mr. Akin would not get a cookie because his Cowboy Hat is a magic Cowboy Hat, which gives him an unfair advantage. I already get a cookie because I used both “eldritch” and” ichor” in the same comment. — R.C.)

  6. It’s not a dead city at all! It’s a Cthulhu-hoop! Those things were all the rage back in the fifties! (Well, the seven-million fifties B.C., but who’s counting). The Cthulhu-hoop: what goes in one end doesn’t come out the other! Buy it now!

  7. Paul: well, there is the slight wrinkle that the scientists claim the Voyager probe photographed the same phenom 20 years ago.
    Me, I wonder if it’s some kind of giant snowflake.

  8. Nog’Ax-Ehe-Lophtron
    R’lyeh
    Zkauba
    What is it about attempts at creating fantasy or science fiction proper names that gives the author the impression that apostrophes, hypens, and unpronounceable combinations of consonants is appropriate?
    I know for a fact that most proper names in other universes are no more complex than ours, with “Zag”, “Zort”, and “Ziggy” as the most popular.

  9. Nothing strange about it. Draw a circle with itself and you get the compass rose/hexagon. Being all gaseous and stuff it’s probably the polar storm from the rotation meeting all the other storms from the “temperate” zones.

  10. What is it about attempts at creating fantasy or science fiction proper names that gives the author the impression that apostrophes, hypens, and unpronounceable combinations of consonants is appropriate?
    I know for a fact that most proper names in other universes are no more complex than ours, with “Zag”, “Zort”, and “Ziggy” as the most popular.
    Well, both “R’lyeh” and “Zkauba” are actual alien words, meant to be pronounced by actual alien tongues, and not human vocal chords. You can thank that Arch-Wizard Mr. Howard Philips “I’ve Been Inducted Into the American Literary Cannon” Lovecraft for those doozies; aliens would routinely consult him on what names they should give their cities / children.
    As for “Nog’Ax-Ehe-Lophtron”, that’s just “North Pole Hexagon” spelt backwards with lots of unnecessary hyphens and apostrophes, as well as one or two other extra-dimensional punctuation marks invisible to the human eye. For that zinger you can thank me, Randolph Carter (the aliens asked me to name their city for them, instead of Mr. Lovecraft, because I charge less of a fee than he does).
    Also, if you think “R’lyeh” is hard to pronounce, try speaking Japanese. Arawareru? Can you say that eight time fast? I shudder at the thought!

  12. you won’t have to worry about any Ancient Cosmic Horrors welling up out of the subterranean darkness to consume you in a maelstrom of terror out of some nightmare of outré things.
    I hate it when that happens. Twice last week.

  13. I don’t see why people think R’lyeh is hard to say. Glottal stops, diphthongs which don’t appear in English — these things are not particularly difficult.
    Of course, it helps if you have a vocal apparatus which is Not Of This Earth.

  14. We used to live about 25 miles from Binger, Ok. and never knew about Ghost mound. There isn’t much tourist talk of it, either. We will go find it (if it exists) this summer and send you some pictures, Jimmy.

  15. I have listened to CAL religiously (no pun intended) for about two months now. I’m coming back to my faith, through people such as yourself and Rosalind Moss.
    In your role as a radio host, thank you for never being upset, condescending, or acting incredulous to your callers’ questions.
    But the Starbuck reference? I stand in awe. So say we all!

Comments are closed.