This oblique view of Saturn shows what may be localized upwellings in the clouds of Saturn's southern hemisphere. Although the contrast is low, a vortex is visible near lower right.

This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings.

The image was taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The image was obtained using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 8, 2006 at a distance of approximately 2.8 million kilometers (1.8 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 152 degrees. Image scale is 17 kilometers (10 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/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.