The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
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Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
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Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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A hurricane, spanning some 2000 km, has been identified at the heart of Saturn’s hexagonal jet stream at the planet’s north pole by the international Cassini spacecraft. A portion of Saturn’s rings can be seen in the distance.
Images with red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural-colour view, which is what the human eye would see if we were there at Saturn.
The image was acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on 27 November 2012 at a distance of approximately 418 000 kilometres from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft angle (phase angle) of 96 degrees. Image scale is 28.6 kilometres per pixel.