The Eye of Saturn
Like a giant eye for the giant planet, Saturn's great vortex at its north pole appears to stare back at Cassini as Cassini stares at it.
Measurements have sized the “eye” at a staggering 1,240 miles (2,000 kilometers) across with cloud speeds as fast as 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second). The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 2, 2014 using a combination of spectral filters which preferentially admit wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 748 nanometers.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.2 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 43 degrees. Image scale is 8 miles (13 kilometers) per pixel.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
#nasa #cassini #saturn #solarsystem #space #planet