This dramatic close-up of Saturn's south pole shows the hurricane-like
vortex that resides there. The entire polar region is dotted with bright
clouds, including one that appears to be inside the central ring of the
polar storm.
The storm was captured in a movie made from Cassini images in November
2006 (see PIA08332).
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera using a
combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized
infrared light. The view was acquired on Jan. 14, 2007 at a distance of
approximately 963,000 kilometers (598,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale
is 54 kilometers (34 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.
