CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Against the Current

Against the Current
PIA 08142
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   Storm Alley's latest, greatest resident, the recent lightning-producing storm seen by Cassini and Earth-based observers churns away. Turbulent eddies to the west (left) of the storm indicate that it is moving eastward relative to the westward-flowing winds at this latitude on Saturn.

Scientists gave the nickname "Storm Alley" to the area around 35 degrees south latitude because of the large amount of activity seen there from the beginning of Cassini's approach to Saturn in early 2004. The region has spawned two large and powerful storms since Cassini began observations.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 16, 2006, using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 750 nanometers, and at a distance of approximately 3.2 million kilometers (2 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 19 kilometers (12 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 Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. 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-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: March 27, 2006 (PIA 08142)
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