Saturn and its Largest Moon Reflect Their True Colors

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
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Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

Joe Mason 720-974-5859
Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
media@ciclops.org

Image advisory: 2012-267 Aug. 29, 2012

Saturn and its Largest Moon Reflect Their True Colors

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-267&cid=release_2012-267

PASADENA, Calif. -- Posing for portraits for NASA's Cassini spacecraft, Saturn and its
largest moon, Titan, show spectacular colors in a quartet of images being released today.
One image captures the changing hues of Saturn's northern and southern hemispheres as
they pass from one season to the next.

The images can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and
http://ciclops.org .

A wide-angle view in today's package captures Titan passing in front of Saturn, as well
as the planet's changing colors. Upon Cassini's arrival at Saturn eight years ago, Saturn's
northern winter hemisphere was an azure blue. Now that winter is encroaching on the
planet's southern hemisphere and summer on the north, the color scheme is reversing:
blue is tinting the southern atmosphere and is fading from the north.

The other three images depict the newly discovered south polar vortex in the atmosphere
of Titan, reported recently by Cassini scientists. Cassini's visible-light cameras have seen
a concentration of yellowish haze in the detached haze layer at the south pole of Titan
since at least March 27. Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer spotted the
massing of clouds around the south pole as early as May 22 in infrared wavelengths.
After a June 27 flyby of the moon, Cassini released a dramatic image and movie showing
the vortex rotating faster than the moon's rotation period. The four images being released
today were acquired in May, June and July of 2012.

Some of these views, such as those of the polar vortex, are only possible because
Cassini's newly inclined -- or tilted -- orbits allow more direct viewing of the polar
regions of Saturn and its moons.


Scientists are looking forward to seeing more of the same -- new phenomena like Titan's
south polar vortex and changes wrought by the passage of time and seasons -- during the
remainder of Cassini's mission.

"Cassini has been in orbit now for the last eight years, and despite the fact that we can't
know exactly what the next five years will show us, we can be certain that whatever it is
will be wondrous," said Carolyn Porco, imaging team lead based at the Space Science
Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Launched in 1997, Cassini went into orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004. It is in its
second mission extension, known as the Solstice Mission, and one of its main goals is to
analyze seasonal changes in the Saturn system.

"It is so fantastic to experience, through the instruments of Cassini, seasonal changes in
the Saturn system," said Amanda Hendrix, deputy project scientist, based at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Some of the changes we see in the data are
completely unexpected, while some occur like clockwork on a seasonal timescale. It's an
exciting time to be at Saturn."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space
Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were
designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

-end-


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