Backyard Astronomer Helps Discover 10-Sided Wave Around Saturn’s South Pole
A former miner in the Australian outback helped make a world-first discovery on Saturn without leaving his backyard. Trevor Barry used the telescope inside an observatory he built at his Broken Hill home to photograph a strange pattern near the planet’s south pole.
Barry first noticed something unusual in 2024. A row of bright spots appeared to form a ripple, so he sent the images to Professor Agustín Sánchez-Lavega at the University of the Basque Country in Spain.
The astronomers compared observations from Barry and other people on the ground with images from the Hubble Space Telescope. What initially looked like a ripple turned out to be part of a giant 10-sided atmospheric wave known as a decagon.
Barry is now one of the co-authors of a paper published in Science Advances. It is the first time a large jet pattern with regular sides has been observed in Saturn’s southern hemisphere.
He Built an Observatory in His Backyard
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Barry, who is now in his 70s, left school after Year 10 and previously worked as a miner. He has been collecting astronomical data from his homemade observatory since the early 2000s.
He began working with Sánchez-Lavega in 2008. According to ABC News, NASA scientist Amy Simon considers Barry one of the agency’s best Saturn observers because of the quality and detail of his reports.
Hubble only photographs Saturn at certain times, sometimes leaving long gaps between images. Barry helps cover some of the days when the space telescope is looking somewhere else.
If he sees something strange, Barry writes down where it appeared and when he saw it. He then takes more photos to find out whether it shows up again.
Saturn Has Another Shape at Its North Pole
Saturn’s north pole has a six-sided wave called a hexagon. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 photographed it in 1980 and 1981, and scientists have continued to see it for more than 40 years.
They had hoped to find something similar at the south pole. However, the Cassini spacecraft never saw one while it was orbiting Saturn between 2004 and 2017. The decagon may be a much newer feature. Hubble photographs show that it was beginning to form in 2023, and Barry noticed the unusual ripple the following year.
Saturn’s changing seasons also helped. As more of the southern hemisphere became visible from Earth, astronomers were able to get a better look at the area around the pole.
No One Knows if the Decagon Will Stay
NASA said the decagon sits inside a powerful jet stream. Images taken at different wavelengths also show that the wave reaches through several layers of Saturn’s atmosphere. Scientists have not figured out why it suddenly appeared. They also can’t say whether it will remain for decades like the northern hexagon or eventually disappear.
More images from Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope may provide some answers. The researchers will also use computer models to study how the wave could have formed.
Barry plans to continue photographing Saturn from his backyard. “Who knows what else might happen, but trust me, there’ll be eyes from Broken Hill,” he told ABC News.
