This Cassini view shows a bright storm that appeared in Saturn's southern
hemisphere in mid-September and continued to evolve afterward. This type
of storm is a good candidate source for lightning because of its sudden
appearance and high level of activity. Lightning can be detected by
Cassini's cameras when the spacecraft is on Saturn's night side, and by
the radio and plasma wave detector on either the day or night side.
Several dark ovals to the left and right of this storm mark the sites of
other storms in this turbulent westward-flowing region of the atmosphere.
The icy moon Enceladus (499 kilometers, or 310 miles, across) is visible
near the bottom of the image.
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 Science Mission
Directorate, 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.
