PIA10553: Stormy Pole


Stormy Pole

Caption:

Saturn's north pole is littered with storms, as we see in this color view of the pole. A bit of the north polar hexagon is also visible at the upper-right.

Cassini scientists are looking forward to sunrise on this pole next year so that they can better study it in visible light.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this full color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 16, 2008 at a distance of approximately 673,000 kilometers (418,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 71 degrees. Image scale is 37 kilometers (23 miles) per pixel.

Background Info:

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/ . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Saturn
System Saturn
Target Type Planet
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Wide Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Atmosphere, Color, Storm, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2009-01-09
Date in Caption 2008-11-16
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10553
Identifier PIA10553