The Eye of Saturn

Like a giant eye for the giant planet, Saturn great vortex at its north pole appears to stare back at Cassini as NASA Cassini spacecraft stares at it. Measurements have sized the "eye" at a staggering 1,240 miles (2,000 kilometers) across with cloud speeds as fast as 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second). For color views of the eye and the surrounding region, see PIA14946 and PIA14944. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 2, 2014 using a combination of spectral filters which preferentially admit wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 748 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.2 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 43 degrees. Image scale is 8 miles (13 kilometers) per pixel. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA18273

Date

2014-08-04

Photographer / author

NASA/JPL-Caltech/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: 84521.