A gorgeous close-up look at the Saturnian atmosphere reveals small, bright
and puffy clouds with long filamentary streamers that are reminiscent of
the anvil-shaped Earthly cirrus clouds that extend downwind of
thunderstorms. Dark ring shadows hang over the scene while the planet
rotates beneath.
The image was taken in infrared light (939 nanometers) with the Cassini
spacecraft wide-angle camera on Oct. 29, 2005, at a distance of
approximately 388,000 kilometers (241,000 miles) from Saturn. The image
scale is 20 kilometers (12 miles) per pixel. The image was contrast
enhanced to improve visibility of 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 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.