Bands of clouds and lace As the Cassini-Huygens mission nears
its rendezvous with Saturn, new details in the banded clouds of
the planet's atmosphere are becoming visible. The NASA/ESA/ASI
Cassini-Huygens spacecraft began its journey to the ringed world
nearly seven years ago and is now less than two months away from
Saturn orbit insertion on 30 June 2004. Cassini’s narrow-angle
camera took this image on 16 April 2004, when the spacecraft was
38.5 million kilometres from Saturn. The dark regions are areas
which are free of high clouds, and bright areas are places with
high, thick clouds which shield the view of the darker areas
below. A dark spot is visible at the south pole, which is
remarkable to scientists because it is so small and centred. The
spot could be affected by Saturn's magnetic field, which is
aligned closely with the planet's rotation axis, unlike the
magnetic fields of Jupiter and Earth. Another notable feature is
the large dark oblong-shaped feature that extends across the
middle. The darker