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PIA07555: Atmospheric Illusion
Believe it or not, this extreme close-up of Saturn's swirling clouds was acquired by NASA's Cassini spacecraft from more than one million kilometers (621,370 miles) from the gas giant planet.
 Target Name:  Saturn
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens 
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  ISS - Narrow Angle 
 Product Size:  1008 x 1008 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Cassini Imaging Team 
 Primary Data Set:  Cassini 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA07555.tif (1.017 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA07555.jpg (78.94 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

Believe it or not, this extreme close-up of Saturn's swirling clouds was acquired from more than one million kilometers (621,370 miles) from the gas giant planet. The rings' image is severely bent by atmospheric refraction as they pass behind the planet.

The dark region in the rings is the 4,800-kilometer-wide (2,980 mile) Cassini Division.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 25, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1 million kilometers (600,000 miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 6 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Image Addition Date:
2005-08-02