Categories: World

Cassini Shows Saturn North Pole Close Up

The north pole of Saturn sits at the center of its own domain. Around it swirl the clouds, driven by the fast winds of Saturn. Beyond that orbits Saturn’s retinue of moons and the countless small particles that form the ring.

Although the poles of Saturn are at the center of all of this motion, not everything travels around them in circles. Some of the jet-stream patterns, such as the hexagon-shaped pattern seen here, have wavy, uneven shapes. The moons as well have orbits that are elliptical, some quite far from circular.

According to NASA, this view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 26 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Dec. 2, 2016 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 890 nanometers.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 619,000 miles (996,000 kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 37 miles (60 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (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. 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, Colorado.

See also: NASA Finds Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planets Around Single Star

Share
Published by
Nataly

Recent Posts

Lunar Leap: How Intuitive Machines Carved a Path for Commercial Space Exploration

The flight to the moon comes from a breakthrough in technology In a move that…

1 month ago

Edward Snowden and Bitcoin: A Revolutionary Perspective on Digital Currency

The Unprecedented Advancement of Digital Currency Edward Snowden, the notorious whistleblower and staunch advocate for…

1 month ago

Beyoncé Breaks New Ground: First Black Woman to Claim No. 1 on Hot Country Songs Chart with ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’

In the ever-evolving tapestry of music, where genres blend like colors on a canvas, Beyoncé…

1 month ago

Trump’s record $355M penalty: Navigating the legal maze and its broader implications

The Verdict Heard Round the World In a seismic shift, Donald Trump, the erstwhile President…

1 month ago

Emma Stone’s BAFTA 2024 Triumph: A Milestone in “Poor Things” Journey

Another high point for Emma Stone The 2024 EE BAFTA Film Awards marked a significant…

1 month ago

United Front Against AI Disruption: Tech Giants Forge Accord to Safeguard Elections

In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) holds the power to both innovate and destabilize,…

1 month ago