NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured a remarkably detailed view of Saturn's clouds revealing waves at the northern boundary of the bright equatorial zone, presumably associated both with the strong wind shear there and also the difference in density across the boundary with the band to the north.
The intense eastward-flowing jet at the equator makes the edges of the equatorial zone among the most strongly sheared on the planet.
To the south, two dark ovals embrace, while dark ring shadows blanket the north. The moon Janus, at 181 kilometers (113 miles) across occupies a mere two pixels beneath the rings, at right of center.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on March 16, using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 728 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 2 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 118 kilometers (73 miles) per pixel.
