Fact Sheet
Bejeweled Planet
Saturn, which is already known for its beautiful rings, shows off more jewelry in this infrared image from the orbiting Cassini spacecraft: a string of pearls. The pearls, which look like a row of small white dots from left to right near the middle of the picture, are holes in the top layers of the planet's thick clouds. They appear brighter in this image because they allow more of the planet's interior heat to escape into space. Each "pearl" is several hundred miles in diameter, and the pearls are spaced almost 2,000 miles apart. They were first seen in 2005, and Cassini continues to study them. [Credit: NASA/JPL/Univ. Arizona]
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