"Our current ideas on what forms Saturn's aurora predict that this region should be empty," Tom Stallard, a scientist at the University of Leicester, England, said in a release. Stallard is the lead author of a paper in this week's Nature detailing new research from the science team of NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Stallard headed a group that used infrared detectors aboard Cassini to probe Saturn's north pole -- the same region where colleagues previously found auroral emissions in ultraviolet light. "The similarities are striking," said Larry Esposito, a planetary scientist with the University of Colorado in Boulder. "It's very consistent with our results."