Cassini Image: Spots on Saturn

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgibin/gs...jpg&type=image

Cassini Image: Spots on Saturn
April 2, 2004

Full-Res: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA05385

As Cassini closes in on Saturn, its view is growing sharper with
time and now reveals new atmospheric features in the planet's southern
hemisphere.

Atmospheric features, such as two small, faint dark spots, visible
in the planet's southern hemisphere, will become clearer in the coming
months. The spots are located at 38 degrees south latitude.

The spacecraft's narrow angle camera took several exposures on
March 8, 2004, which have been combined to create this natural color
image. The image contrast and colors have been slightly enhanced to
aid visibility.

Moons visible in the lower half of this image a Mimas (398
kilometers, or 247 miles across) at left, just below the rings;
Dione (1,118 kilometers, or 695 miles across) at left, below Mimas;
and Enceladus (499 kilometers, 310 miles across) at right. The moons
had their brightness enhanced to aid visibility.

The spacecraft was then 56.4 million kilometers (35 million miles)
from Saturn, or slightly more than one-third of the distance from
Earth to the Sun. The image scale is approximately 338 kilometers
(210 miles) per pixel. The planet is 23 percent larger in this
image than it appeared in the preceding color image, taken four
weeks earlier.

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 Cassini-Huygens mission for
NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The imaging
team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

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 Cassini-Huygens mission for
NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The imaging team
is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit,

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

and the Cassini imaging team home page,

http://ciclops.org .

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute