ESA Science & Technology - Swirls of Clouds in Infrared

On its final approach to orbit insertion, Cassini snapped this image of a turbulent swirl in the high clouds of Saturn's atmosphere. The disturbance occurs in the southern edge of the equatorial band. The image was taken on 21 May 2004 from a distance of 22 million kilometres from Saturn through a filter centered at 889 nanometres. The image scale is 131 kilometres per pixel. Contrast in the image was enhanced to aid visibility.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency