This close-up of Saturn's southern hemisphere shows several dark spots
huddled in the mid-latitude region. The largest of these spots is about
3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles) across, or about as wide as Japan is long.
Also visible are light-colored, lacy cloud patterns indicative of
atmospheric turbulence. The image was taken with the Cassini narrow angle
camera through a near-infrared filter on May 7, 2004, from a distance of
28.2 million kilometers (17.5 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is
168 kilometers (104 miles) per pixel. The image has been contrast-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.