Ladies and gentlemen, hold my coffee while I drool over this mind-bending image of Saturn—revealing waves of clouds swirling high above the planet. The image was snapped by the Cassini spacecraft at an altitude of 750,000 miles.
It’s pure magic!
The image was snapped by the Cassini spacecraft’s narrow-angle camera which takes advantage of a combination of “spectral filters” allowing it preferentially admit different wavelengths of near-infrared light reports NASA.
This, never-before-seen image (False-color) of Saturn was beamed back by the Cassini spacecraft was captured using the narrow-angle camera on May 18.
NASA indicates in a report how this image is centered at 46 degrees north latitude on Saturn.
This mind-bending view of Saturn was snapped at a distance of around 1.2 million kilometers—or 750,000 miles if you prefer—from the gas giant.
A rare beauty snapped by the Cassini spacecraft. Check out the Full-Res TIFF PIA21341.tif
NASA notes how the image scale is around 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel.
If you look closely, you’ll observe how Saturn’s upper atmosphere generates a faint haze seen along the limb of the planet in this awesome image.
Cassini’s narrow-angle camera took advantage of a combination of “spectral filters” to preferentially admit different wavelengths of near-infrared light reports NASA.
“Neighboring bands of clouds move at different speeds and directions depending on their latitudes. This generates turbulence where bands meet and leads to the wavy structure along the interfaces. Saturn’s upper atmosphere generates the faint haze seen along the limb of the planet in this image,” wrote NASA in a report.