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> Backlit Saturn seen by Cassini

Backlit Saturn seen by Cassini

author: Nasa/JPL/SSI/Novapix

reference: a-sat05-00060

Image Size 300 DPI: 23 * 11 cm

This panoramic view was created by combining a total of 165 images taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera over nearly three hours on Sept. 15, 2006. Color in the view was created by digitally compositing ultraviolet, infrared and clear filter images and was then adjusted to resemble natural color. The mosaic images were acquired as the spacecraft drifted in the darkness of Saturn's shadow for about 12 hours, allowing a multitude of unique observations of the microscopic particles that compose Saturn's faint rings. During this period of observation Cassini detected two new faint rings: one coincident with the shared orbit of the moons Janus and Epimetheus, and another coincident with Pallene's orbit. The narrowly confined G ring is easily seen here, outside the bright main rings. Encircling the entire system is the much more extended E ring. The icy plumes of Enceladus, whose eruptions supply the E ring particles, betray the moon's position in the E ring's left-side edge. Interior to the G ring and above the brighter main rings is the pale dot of Earth. Cassini views its point of origin from over a billion kilometers (and close to a billion miles) away in the icy depths of the outer solar system. Cassini was approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn when the images in this mosaic were taken.

Keywords for this photo:

2006 - ASTRONOMY - CASSINI - EARTH - EARTH FROM SPACE - GLOBAL VIEW - NIGHT - PLANET - RING - SATURN - SHADOW -