Four Ways to See Saturn

A montage of Cassini images, taken in four different regions of the spectrum from ultraviolet to near-infrared, demonstrates that there is more to Saturn than meets the eye. The pictures show the effects of absorption and scattering of light at different wavelengths by both atmospheric gas and clouds of differing heights and thicknesses. They also show absorption of light by colored particles mixed with white ammonia clouds in the planet's atmosphere. Contrast has been enhanced to aid visibility of the atmosphere. Cassini's narrow-angle camera took these four images over a period of 20 minutes on April 3, 2004, when the spacecraft was 44.5 million kilometers (27.7 million miles) from the planet. The image scale is approximately 267 kilometers (166 miles) per pixel. All four images show the same face of Saturn. In the upper left image, Saturn is seen in ultraviolet wavelengths (298 nanometers); at upper right, in visible blue wavelengths (440 nanometers); at lower left, in far red wavelengths just beyond the visible-light spectrum (727 nanometers; and at lower right, in near-infrared wavelengths (930 nanometers). The sliver of light seen in the northern hemisphere appears bright in

Date

2004-04-22

Photographer / author

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Collection

JPL

Archive

NASA Image and Video Library

Type

photograph

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