CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Round Vortex

Round Vortex
PIA 08873
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   This close-up view of Saturn's atmosphere shows a circular vortex surrounded by numerous attendant bright clouds.

Some blurring due to spacecraft motion is apparent in this view.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 3, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 15 kilometers (9 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: February 13, 2007 (PIA 08873)
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