ESA Science & Technology - Southern Hemisphere in Ultraviolet

With ultraviolet eyes, Cassini gazes at cloud bands and wavy structures in Saturn's southern hemisphere. In the ultraviolet, the gaseous part of the atmosphere is bright and high clouds and aerosols tend to be dark. The Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera took the image on 15 May 2004, from a distance of 24.7 million kilometres from Saturn through a filter centered at 298 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.