Image: Serene Saturn
From a distance Saturn seems to exude an aura of serenity and peace.
In spite of this appearance, Saturn is an active and dynamic world. Its atmosphere is a fast-moving and turbulent place with wind speeds in excess of 1,100 miles per hour (1,800 km per hour) in places. The lack of a solid surface to create drag means that there are fewer features to slow down the wind than on a planet like Earth.
Mimas, to the upper-right of Saturn, has been brightened by a factor of 2 for visibility.
In this view, Cassini was at a subspacecraft latitude of 19 degrees North. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 4, 2015 using a spectral filter centered at 752 nanometers, in the near-infrared portion of the spectrum.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 96 miles (150 kilometers) per pixel.
Provided by NASA