This detailed view of Saturn's southern hemisphere shows clouds, storms
and waves in the planet's many latitudinal bands.
The image was taken through a filter where methane gas has strong
absorption. The cloud particles scatter light back toward the camera, but
methane gas absorbs it, so only high clouds are visible in this image.
Differences in cloud height are not resolvable; the impression of parallel
ridges and troughs is an optical illusion brought about by the alternating
light and dark bands.
Saturn's rings were overexposed in this long duration exposure and appear
quite bright.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on
Sept. 12, 2004, at a distance of 8.7 million kilometers (5.4 million
miles) from Saturn through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared
light centered at 889 nanometers. The image scale is 103 kilometers (64
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 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.