In the low light near Saturn's north pole, the Cassini spacecraft captures
a partial view of the planet's unique hexagonal feature. One side and two
corners of the hexagon are seen at center.
Saturn's north polar hexagon was fully imaged in thermal infrared by
Cassini in Oct. 2006 (see PIA09188).
The imaging cameras will see progressively more of the feature as solar
illumination creeps northward with the onset of spring in the northern
hemisphere.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
wide-angle camera on July 13, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance of
approximately 748,000 kilometers (465,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale
is 41 kilometers (26 miles) per pixel.
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 mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
