Bright, high-altitude clouds interact with dark, deeper structures near
Saturn's south pole. The dark vortices near lower right are two especially
large examples of such deep structures. These vortices create eddies in
the higher clouds at adjacent latitudes as they pass by.
This image has been strongly contrast enhanced in order to sharpen details
in the layered clouds near lower right.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Aug.
27, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared
light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of
approximately 457,000 kilometers (284,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale
is 24 kilometers (15 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/. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.