CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Feathery Belts and Zones

Feathery Belts and Zones
PIA 06570
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   This is a highly detailed look at the feathery, wavelike patterns in the cloud bands of Saturn's southern hemisphere. Near center, long filaments wrap around a swirling vortex. Notable is the extreme change in appearance at very high southern latitudes.

The image was taken with Cassini's wide angle camera on December 14, 2004, from a distance of 595,000 kilometers (370,000 miles) from Saturn through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 890 nanometers. It has been highly processed to enhance details. The image scale is about 32 kilometers (20 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: January 25, 2005 (PIA 06570)
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