CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Saturn 'Rev 175' Raw Preview #1

Saturn 'Rev 175' Raw Preview #1
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   This raw, unprocessed image of Saturn was taken on November 27, 2012 and received on Earth November 27, 2012. The camera was pointing toward Saturn at approximately 361488 kilometers away, and the image was taken using the P0 and CB2 filters. The image has not been validated or calibrated. A validated/calibrated image will be archived with the Planetary Data System in 2013.

The Cassini Solstice Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini Solstice Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
Released: November 28, 2012
Image/Caption Information


Alliance Member Comments
qweasd (Dec 20, 2012 at 3:19 PM):
An anaglyph would be killer.
NeKto (Dec 19, 2012 at 8:05 AM):
after looking at the "jaw dropping" image labeled "a splendor seldom seen" i had the thought that these perhaps 100 kilometer tall cloud banks could be a few hundred kilometers deep in the atmosphere.
is there an estimate on the atmospheric pressure at the cloud tops?
how about cloud top temperatures?
how deep is this atmosphere we are looking through?
thanks for the great images!
NeKto (Dec 11, 2012 at 7:19 AM):
the back of the envelope calculation sounds reasonable to me. if it is anywhere near close, there has to be a lot of elevation change over those cloud tops. one heck of a vortex up there. interesting that the character, at least in appearance, is strikingly different from the south pole.
bruno.thiery (Dec 2, 2012 at 11:32 AM):
This is such cold beauty.
Such beauty.
Only clouds, not the dazzling rings nor the string of pearls of the satellites; and still I hope we will have more shots like this.
Thanks!
qweasd (Nov 30, 2012 at 7:26 AM):
My back-of-envelope calculations show about 900 km from the center to the pretty white storms in upper left. It would be nice to know the actual resolution though.
NeKto (Nov 29, 2012 at 6:17 PM):
another set of "WOW" images. with the light angle showing so much three dimensional information, i could study the detail for hours.
could you folks at the lab please give us some sense of scale? i would love to get a ballpark idea how large the vortex is and how high some of those cloud mountains are.