Saturn's captivating cloud bands display a number of interesting features
in this narrow angle camera image taken by the Cassini spacecraft on May
20, 2004. On close inspection, the sub-equatorial bands at around 20
degrees south latitude have a braided rope-like appearance. Also
noteworthy are swirls and vortices around 60 degrees south latitude.
The moon Mimas (398 kilometers, or 247 miles across) is visible just
below and to the right of Saturn's South Pole.
The image was taken when Cassini was 22 million kilometers (13.7 million
miles) from Saturn through a filter centered at 727 nanometers. The image
scale is 131 kilometers (81 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.
