Tempest-Tossed Saturn

The Cassini spacecraft views Saturn's southern latitudes in color, spying a great, eye-shaped vortex just northward of the south polar region. Other dark vortices, common features of Saturn's general circulation, are visible in the mid-latitudes.

Contrast in the image was enhanced to make features in the atmosphere more visible.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this near-natural color view. The images were taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 14, 2007 at a distance of approximately 958,000 kilometers (595,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 54 kilometers (33 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 mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute