Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute Download a larger image version here

Details observed in Saturn's south polar region demonstrate that this area is far from featureless. Lighter colored clouds dot the entire region, which is dominated by a central, sharply-defined circular feature. Movie sequences in which these features are captured and followed will allow wind speeds in the polar region to be measured.

This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft's narrow angle camera on May 20, 2004, from a distance of 22 million kilometers (13.7 million miles) from Saturn through a filter centered at 750 nanometers. The image scale is 131 kilometers (81 miles) per pixel. Contrast in the image was enhanced and magnified to aid visibility.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, 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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado.