As Cassini gets closer to Saturn, it keeps bringing us amazing and never before seen imagery. Most of the images are un-processed and shown to the public as un-processed imagery – but thanks to the work of two talented astronomers, astrophysicists Sophia Nasr and graphic designer Jason Majo – we’ve just received our first true color image of Saturn’s North Pole.
Below you can see the center of the North Pole is actually a gorgeous blue that spans 1,200 miles across (2,000kms) surrounded by a subtle shade of yellow.
Saturn’s north pole is also known as as ‘Saturn’s Hexagon’. The hexagon is a turbulent jet stream that was first spotted by Voyager in the 80s.
Clouds swirl around the hexagon at over 300 miles per hour which help to scatter the sunlight to produce the blue-ish color seen in the vortex. In order to produce the image Nasr used Photoshop and combined three images using red, blue, and green filters. This process is the one of closest resemblances we can get next to actually being there.
As Cassini continues to get closer to Saturn, there’s sure to be more amazing imagery, and we promise to keep you updated.