This image shows dramatic details in the swirling, turbulent bands of clouds in Saturn’s atmosphere. Particularly noteworthy is the disturbed equatorial region. The image was taken with the Cassini narrow angle camera on May 10, 2004, in the spectral region where methane strongly absorbs light. It was taken at a distance of 27.2 million kilometers (16.9 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 162 kilometers (101 miles) per pixel. Contrast in the image was enhanced to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org .
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
