PIA09910: Deep Clouds
 Target Name:  Saturn
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  ISS - Wide Angle
 Product Size:  976 x 1016 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Cassini Imaging Team
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA09910.tif (2.979 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA09910.jpg (71.25 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:

Bright puffs and ribbons of cloud drift lazily through Saturn's murky skies. In contrast to the bold red, orange and white clouds of Jupiter, Saturn's clouds are overlain by a thick layer of haze.

The visible cloud tops on Saturn are deeper in its atmosphere due to the planet's cooler temperatures.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 18 degrees above the ringplane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on April 15, 2008 at a distance of approximately 1.5 million kilometers (906,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 84 kilometers (52 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.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Image Addition Date:
2008-05-27