Storm Rages On Saturn

(NASA) A giant storm continues to rage on the planet Saturn’s southern hemisphere. First viewed back in January, the storm can be seen here as a brightening in Saturn’s subdued cloud bands. Also captured in this shot by the orbiting Cassini Spacecraft is Saturn’s moon Tethys, seen just below the plain of the rings. The fact that the storm stands out against the subtle banding of Saturn at visible wavelengths suggests that the storm’s cloud tops are relatively high in the atmosphere. Tethys is 1,071 kilometers (665 miles) across. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 18, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.8 million kilometers (1.7 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 162 kilometers (101 miles) per pixel on Saturn.