Mid-Latitude Storms
Date: 17 June 2004
Satellite: Cassini
Depicts: Saturn
Copyright: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Cassini continues its vigil as Saturn's atmosphere churns and morphs through time. Four large, dark spots, or storms, form a symmetrical pattern in the mid-southern latitudes as these features squeeze past each other. Further observations will show whether these storms merge or spawn new spots of their own. North of the features, some latitudinal bands exhibit a bumpy or scalloped pattern, probably indicative of planet-scale wave motions in the atmosphere.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft's narrow angle camera on 15 May 2004, from a distance of 24.7 million kilometres from Saturn through a filter centered at 750 nanometres. The image scale is 147 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.
