Anatomy of the Storm

The angry eye of a hurricane-like storm appears dark red, while the fast-moving hexagonal jet stream framing it is a yellowish-green. Low-lying clouds circling inside the hexagonal feature appear as a muted orange color.

A second, smaller vortex pops out in teal at the lower right of the image. The iconic rings of Saturn appear in vivid blue at the top right.

Decoding the Colors

The images were taken with Cassini’s wide-angle camera using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light.

• Red (752 nm): Indicates deep layers of the planet's polar atmosphere.
• Green (728 nm): Shows clouds that are higher in altitude, typically associated with locations of intense upwelling in a storm.
• Blue (890 nm): The rings are bright blue in this color scheme because there is no methane gas between the ring particles and the camera.

These images help scientists learn the distribution, frequencies, and vertical structures of such storms.

Observation Details

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 261,000 miles (419,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a sun-Saturn-spacecraft (phase) angle of 94 degrees. The image scale is 13 miles (22 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed, and assembled at JPL.