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Cloud Detail

Dec. 19, 2007
A transitional region in Saturn's atmosphere features long, linear cloud shapes, flanked to the north and south by more turbulent swirls. A dark vortex swirls ringed by bright clouds. This image was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Nov.8, 2007.

A transitional region in Saturn's atmosphere features long, linear cloud shapes, flanked to the north and south by more turbulent swirls. At top center in this view swirls a dark vortex ringed by bright clouds.

The view is centered on a region 44 degrees north of the Saturnian equator. North is up.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 8, 2007 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 750 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 2.9 million kilometers (1.8 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 17 kilometers (10 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/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

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