This view of Saturn's southern polar region is dotted with flecks of
bright cloud and several ominous dark spots. Remarkably fine details are
visible.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on
July 24, 2004, at a distance of 6.8 million kilometers (4.2 million miles)
from Saturn, through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light
centered at 938 nanometers. The image scale is 40 kilometers (25 miles)
per pixel. Contrast was slightly enhanced to bring out features in the
atmosphere.
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.