Friday, July 9, 2010

Southern Cloud Swirls


Huge clouds swirl through the southern latitudes of Saturn where the rings cast dramatic shadows.

This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on April 30, 2010 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 728 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 67 degrees. Image scale is 79 kilometers (49 miles) per pixel.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

No comments:

Post a Comment