Bands of Clouds and Lace

As Cassini nears its rendezvous with Saturn, new detail in the banded clouds of the planet's atmosphere are becoming visible. Cassini began the journey to the ringed world of Saturn nearly seven years ago and is now less than two months away from orbit insertion on June 30. Cassini’s narrow-angle camera took this image on April 16, 2004, when the spacecraft was 38.5 million kilometers (23.9 million miles) from Saturn. Dark regions are generally areas free of high clouds, and bright areas are places with high, thick clouds which shield the view of the darker areas below. A dark spot is visible at the south pole, which is remarkable to scientists because it is so small and centered. The spot could be affected by Saturn's magnetic field, which is nearly aligned with the planet's rotation axis, unlike the magnetic fields of Jupiter and Earth. From south to north, other notable features are the two white spots just above the dark spot toward the right, and the large dark oblong-shaped feature that extends across the middle. The darker band beneath the oblong-shaped feature has begun to show a lacy pattern of lighter-colored, high altitude clouds, indicative of turbulent atmospheric cond

Date

2004-05-13

Photographer / author

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Collection

JPL

Archive

NASA Image and Video Library

Type

photograph

Need photos for a whole script? Add Find Any Photo to Claude and ask for this one by its id: 84416.