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Cosmic Contrast

March 6, 2007
Bright equatorial clouds give way to darker southern bands in this infrared view taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft with a filter sensitive to methane absorption in Saturn's atmosphere

Bright equatorial clouds give way to darker southern bands in this infrared Cassini spacecraft view taken with a filter sensitive to methane absorption in Saturn's atmosphere.

Delicate shadows cast onto the planet by its inner rings are visible at upper right. A portion of the same inner rings are seen at lower right.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light. The view was acquired on Jan. 14, 2007 at a distance of approximately 976,000 kilometers (606,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 55 kilometers (34 miles) per pixel.

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.

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