Two pairs of dark spots, or storms, in Saturn's atmosphere squeeze past each other as they dance around the planet. In this group of four storms, the top left and lower right storms are fringed with white clouds. The image was taken with the Cassini narrow angle camera in the near infrared on May 5, 2004, at a distance of 29.5 million kilometers (18.3 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 176 kilometers (109 miles) per pixel. Contrast in the image was enhanced to aid visibility.
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 Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, 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 .
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute