Saturns Clouds Caught In Shear Zone

SATURN DAILY

Cassini captured this close-up of Saturn's atmosphere showing bright clouds in the planet's northern hemisphere being sheared apart by competing winds. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (SPX) Mar 23, 2006
NASA's Cassini spacecraft swept by Saturn last month and caught this atmospheric close-up showing bright clouds in the planet's northern hemisphere being sheared apart.

The clouds at the bottom of the image are tilted and stretched because the winds at those lower latitudes are moving much faster to the east than the winds at the higher latitudes near the top of the image - hence the shear.

Mission scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the image suggests the bright eddies are passive tracers of the atmosphere's motion. They appear, probably as a result of upwelling due to convection from below, and then are sheared apart.

Cassini took the image Feb. 16 in visible light with its narrow-angle camera, at a distance of approximately 3.3 million kilometers (2 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 19 kilometers (12 miles) per pixel.

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