This Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera view of Saturn's southern
polar region shows interesting details in the swirling boundaries between
cloud bands. Two faint spots are visible at right, north and south of the
boundary of the dark polar collar. The dark spot at the bottom of the
image marks the planet's south pole.
The image was taken on July 19, 2004, at a distance of 6.2 million
kilometers (3.9 million miles) from Saturn, through a filter which lets
infrared light pass through. The image scale is 36 kilometers (22 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.