PIA13403: Four Aurora Snapshots
 Target Name:  Saturn
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer
 Product Size:  737 x 513 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  University of Arizona/VIMS
 Other  
Information: 
JPL Press Release 2009-313
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA13403.tif (1.136 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA13403.jpg (33.23 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:

A quartet of false-color, composite images show the dance of Saturn's southern lights in data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. This image is among the first images to be released from a study that extracts auroral emissions out of the entire catalogue of images taken by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer.

In this image constructed from data collected in the near-infrared wavelengths of light, the auroral emission is shown in green. The data represents emissions from hydrogen ions in of light between 3 and 4 microns in wavelength. In general, scientists designated blue to indicate sunlight reflected at a wavelength of 2 microns, green to indicate sunlight reflected at 3 microns and red to indicate thermal emission at 5 microns. Saturn's rings reflect sunlight at 2 microns, but not at 3 and 5 microns, so they appear deep blue. Saturn's high altitude haze reflects sunlight at both 2 and 3 microns, but not at 5 microns, and so it appears green to blue-green. The heat emission from the interior of Saturn is only seen at 5 microns wavelength in the spectrometer data, and thus appears red. The dark spots and banded features in the image are clouds and small storms that outline the deeper weather systems and circulation patterns of the planet. They are illuminated from underneath by Saturn's thermal emission, and thus appear in silhouette.

The images that make up the composite were obtained on May 24, 2007.

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 was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/ASI/University of Arizona/University of Leicester

Image Addition Date:
2010-09-23