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The glowing colours of Saturn

— Photo: AP/NASA

RINGED: Image showing a false-colour mosaic of Saturn.

NASA has provided an image showing a false-colour mosaic of Saturn. It has deep-level clouds silhouetted against the planet's glowing interior. The image was made with data from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, which can image the planet at 352 wavelengths.

This mosaic shows the entire planet, including features such as its ring shadows and the terminator — the boundary between day and night. The data were obtained in February at a distance of 1.6 million km from directly over the plane of rings, which appear as a blue line over the equator.

The blue-green colour represents sunlight scattered off clouds high in Saturn's atmosphere, and the red the glow of thermal radiation from its warm interior. The glow is seen on the night side , within the rings' shadows, and with less contrast on the day side.

The darker areas show the strongest thermal radiation. The bright red indicates areas where the atmosphere is relatively clear. The variety of cloud shapes and sizes reveals an active planet . — AP

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