Long streamers of cloud encircle the south polar region of Saturn. Farther poleward, or toward lower left, faint, deeper atmospheric structures lurk beneath the haze.

This image was acquired from a vantage point 74 degrees south of the planet's equator.

The view was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Oct. 2, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 728 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 369,000 kilometers (229,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 19 kilometers (12 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.