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.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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This natural colour image was taken on 27 March 2004 by the narrow angle camera on the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens spacecraft. It was the last single ‘eyeful’ of Saturn and its rings achievable with this camera on approach to the planet.
From then on, Saturn and its rings will be larger than the field of view of the narrow angle camera.
Two faint dark spots are visible in the southern hemisphere. These spots are close to the latitude where Cassini saw two storms merging in mid-March. The fate of the storms visible here is unclear. They are getting close and will eventually merge or squeeze past each other.
The image is a composite of three exposures, in red, green and blue, taken when the spacecraft was 47.7 million kilometres from the planet. The image scale is 286 kilometres per pixel.