Photograph Description

This view is of Saturn’s southern hemisphere. A section of the rings are visible at bottom right. The banded appearance of the planet is caused by the variation in composition of clouds in its atmosphere. Vortices in the atmosphere are visible as elliptical or circular shapes (lower left and upper centre). This image was achieved by combining images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters. It was taken with the wide-angle camera onboard the Cassini spacecraft, at a distance of approximately 958,000 kilometres from Saturn, on February 3rd 2007. (Photo by Science Photo Library)