Saturn's restless clouds offer endless complexity, such as this
small-scale repeating pattern upon which is superimposed a larger-scale
wavelike modulation of the boundary between a bright zone and a darker
belt. The pattern may result from density or wind discontinuities.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on
May 11, 2006 at a distance of approximately 2.9 million kilometers (1.8
million miles) from Saturn. The image was obtained using a spectral filter
sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers.
Image scale is 17 kilometers (11 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.