This stunning Cassini image shows that Saturn's atmosphere is an active
and dynamic place, full of storms and powerful winds. This view is of the
planet's southern hemisphere and shows dark storms ringed by bright
clouds. The line along the limb of the planet is an artifact of the
contrast-enhancement used to bring out features in the atmosphere.
The white churning clouds are at a latitude where winds blow to the west
-- one of the few such places on Saturn. This latitude has been active
since the beginning of 2004 and has been informally named "Storm Alley"
by Cassini imaging scientists.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on
Sept. 19, 2004, at a distance of 8.3 million kilometers (5.2 million
miles) from Saturn through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared
light centered at 750 nanometers. The image scale is 49 kilometers (30
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 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.
