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> Saturn's rings from Cassini

Saturn's rings from Cassini

author: Nasa/JPL/SSI/Novapix

reference: a-sat05-10007

Image Size 300 DPI: 27 * 24 cm

The Cassini spacecraft, flying high above Saturn, captured this view of an alien copper-colored ring world. The overexposed planet has deliberately been removed to show the unlit rings alone, seen from an elevation of 60 degrees. The view is a mosaic of 27 images --nine separate sets of red, green and blue images-- taken over the course of about 45 minutes, as Cassini scanned across the entire main ring system. The planet's shadow carves a dark swath across the ring plane at the right. Moons visible in this image: Epimetheus (116 kilometers, or 72 miles across) at the 1 o'clock position, Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles across) at the 5 o'clock position, Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across) at the 10 o'clock position. The images in this natural-color view were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 21, 2007, at a distance of approximately 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 90 kilometers (56 miles) per pixel.    

Keywords for this photo:

2007 - ASTRONOMY - CASSINI - EPIMETHEUS - ICE - JANUS - PANDORA - PLANET - RING - SATELLITE - SATURN - SATURN'S MOON - SHADOW -