The Cassini spacecraft captures a spectacular view of Saturn's banded
southern hemisphere and dark central polar storm, while its dazzling rings
lie far beyond the horizon.
The image was taken by the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera using a
combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized
infrared light. The image was obtained on Jan. 31, 2007 at a distance of
approximately 979,000 kilometers (608,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale
is 110 kilometers (68 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/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.