PIA09755: Whirlwinds of Saturn


Whirlwinds of Saturn

Caption:

Incredible gales blow in Saturn's twisted atmosphere. Winds in this region of Saturn have been measured at greater than 360 kilometers (225 miles) per hour, faster than the most powerful hurricanes on Earth.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 17, 2007, using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 750 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 3.5 million kilometers (2.2 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 21 kilometers (13 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/home/index.cfm . 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 Narrow Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Atmosphere, Grayscale, Infrared, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2007-10-23
Date in Caption
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09755
Identifier PIA09755