CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Painted Lines on an Ornament

The globe of Saturn, seen here in natural color, is reminiscent of a holiday ornament in this wide-angle view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The characteristic hexagonal shape of Saturn's northern jet stream, somewhat yellow here, is visible. At the pole lies a Saturnian version of a high-speed hurricane, eye and all.

To learn more about Saturn's north polar region see PIA14944 and PIA14945.

This view is centered on terrain at 75 degrees north latitude, 120 degrees west longitude. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural-color view. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 22, 2013.

This view was acquired at a distance of approximately 611,000 miles (984,000 kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 51 miles (82 kilometers) per pixel.

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/Space Science Institute
Released: December 23, 2013 (PIA 17175)
Image/Caption Information 		  Painted Lines on an Ornament
PIA 17175
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Alliance Member Comments
Dragon_of_Luck_Mah_Jonng1971 (Jan 2, 2014 at 1:50 PM):
A fascinating color image of the north polar hexagon.