This is simply too good to pass up, although it's been doing the rounds online. As the seasons change on Saturn the north polar region is now getting its share of faint solar illumination. Cassini recently (very recently, as in Nov 27th) took this amazing image of the swirling atmospheric circulation at the northern pole of the gas giant planet. This is the raw data, and for some sense of scale - this is the view from 225,000 miles away. Although not explicitly stated on the Cassini pages I suspect these images were made using one of the infrared filters.
Raw image of Saturn's north pole, as sunlight begins to illuminate the cloud tops (NASA/Cassini)
And another for good measure, from a different angle and slightly further away.
Northern polar view (NASA/Cassini)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Caleb A. Scharf
Caleb A. Scharf is director of astrobiology at Columbia University. He is author and co-author of more than 100 scientific research articles in astronomy and astrophysics. His work has been featured in publications such as New Scientist, Scientific American, Science News, Cosmos Magazine, Physics Today and National Geographic. For many years he wrote the Life, Unbounded blog for Scientific American.
