Following the Clouds

The Cassini spacecraft monitors the myriad cloud forms that drift in Saturn's atmosphere, helping scientists gain a better understanding of how energy is transported around, and from within, the planet.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 23 degrees above the ringplane. Saturn's shadow hides the rings at top.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 25, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 94 kilometers (58 miles) per pixel.

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 .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute