Holiday lights: New views of Saturn and its moons

This July 22, 2013 image provided by NASA shows the globe of Saturn, seen here in natural color, in this wide-angle view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The characteristic hexagonal shape of Saturn’s northern jet stream, somewhat yellow here, is visible. At the pole lies a Saturnian version of a high-speed hurricane, eye and all. This view is centered on terrain at 75 degrees north latitude, 120 degrees west longitude. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural-color view. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

PASADENA, California – A NASA spacecraft has sent holiday greetings from the outer solar system.

The space agency on Monday released dazzling new images of the ringed planet Saturn and its moons. The Cassini spacecraft took the pictures earlier this year.

Saturn resembled an ornament in one image, with a jet stream swirling at its north pole along with a hurricane-like storm.

Cassini also peered through the hazy atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, revealing hydrocarbon lakes. The icy Saturn moon Enceladus appears as a white snowball.

Cassini, funded by NASA and the European and Italian space agencies, was launched in 1997.

The spacecraft reached Saturn in 2004 and has been studying the planet and its many moons.