Galerie de photos des anneaux de la planète Saturne

<h1>PIA08306: Colorful Division</h1><div class="PIA08306" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>The rings are awash in subtle tones of gold and cream in this view which shows the outer B ring, the Cassini Division and the inner part of the A ring.</p><p>In this viewing geometry, the brightest feature in the Cassini Division is the recently discovered diffuse ringlet near the outer edge of the Division (see also <a href="/catalog/PIA08330">PIA08330</a>). The diffuse ringlet has a distinctive bluish cast.</p><p>The color of the rings appears more golden than earlier in the mission because of the viewing geometry here -- increased scattering in the rings is brought about by the high phase angle and the view being toward the rings' unlit side.</p><p>This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 30 degrees above the ringplane.</p><p>Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired by the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 29, 2006 at a distance of approximately 1.829 million kilometers (1.137 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08306" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08306: Colorful Division sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08306: Colorful Division sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08306: Colorful Division
<h1>PIA08308: Streamers and Clumps</h1><div class="PIA08308" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>The A and F rings are alive with moving structures in this Cassini spacecraft view. Graceful drapes of ring material created by Prometheus are seen sliding by at left, while clumpy ringlets slip through the Encke Gap.</p><p>Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across) is all but invisible to the right of the lowest streamer seen here.</p><p>This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 12 degrees above the ringplane.</p><p>The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 7, 2006 at a distance of approximately 1.9 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 163 degrees. Image scale is 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08308" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08308: Streamers and Clumps sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08308: Streamers and Clumps sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08308: Streamers and Clumps
<h1>PIA08310: Encke's Kinks</h1><div class="PIA08310" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Bright, kinked ringlets fill the Encke Gap, while the F ring glows brilliantly and displays its signature knots and flanking, diffuse ringlets.</p><p>This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 13 degrees above the ringplane.</p><p>The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 7, 2006 at a distance of approximately 1.9 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 163 degrees. Image scale is 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08310" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08310: Encke's Kinks sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08310: Encke's Kinks sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08310: Encke's Kinks
<h1>PIA08313: The Spoke Zone</h1><div class="PIA08313" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>The spoke-producing region of the B ring displays fine-scale asymmetry in the azimuthal direction -- the direction along which the ring particles orbit Saturn -- from upper left to lower right across the image.</p><p>This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 14 degrees above the ringplane.</p><p>The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 12, 2006 at a distance of approximately 429,000 kilometers (267,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08313" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08313: The Spoke Zone sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08313: The Spoke Zone sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08313: The Spoke Zone
<h1>PIA08316: The Search for Spokes</h1><div class="PIA08316" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>A broad and ghostly spoke drifts past under the Cassini spacecraft's gaze. The spoke-forming region of the B ring displays faint longitudinal variations in brightness, from left to right, a feature seen in other images (see <a href="/catalog/PIA08300">PIA08300</a>).</p><p>This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 35 degrees above the ringplane.</p><p>The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 17, 2006 at a distance of approximately 2 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 158 degrees. Image scale is 12 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08316" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08316: The Search for Spokes sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08316: The Search for Spokes sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08316: The Search for Spokes
<h1>PIA08319: Edge Waves</h1><div class="PIA08319" lang="en" style="width:720px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Daphnis drifts through the Keeler gap, at the center of its entourage of waves.</p><p>The little moon (7 kilometers, or 4.3 miles across) draws material in the Keeler gap (42 kilometers, or 26 miles wide) into these now familiar edge waves as it orbits Saturn.</p><p>This view looks toward the lit side of the rings from about 25 degrees below the ringplane.</p><p>The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 27, 2006 at a distance of approximately 325,000 kilometers (202,000 miles) from Daphnis and at a Sun-Daphnis-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 36 degrees. Image scale is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08319" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08319: Edge Waves sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08319: Edge Waves sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08319: Edge Waves
<h1>PIA08322: The Janus/Epimetheus Ring</h1><div class="PIA08322" lang="en" style="width:512px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/figures/PIA08322_fig1.jpg"></a><br />Figure 1</p><p>A new diffuse ring, coincident with the orbits of Saturn's moon's Janus and Epimetheus, has been revealed in ultra-high phase angle views from Cassini. Ultra-high phase angle indicates the sun is behind the target. </p><p>The new ring is visible in this image (marked by a cross in figure 1) outside the overexposed main rings and interior to the G and E rings. The G ring has a sharp inner boundary; the E ring is extremely broad and arcs across the upper and lower portions of the scene. </p><p>While it is not unexpected that impact events on Janus and Epimetheus might kick particles off the moons' surfaces and inject them into Saturn orbit, it is, surprising that a well-defined structure exists at this location.</p><p>The view looks down from about 15 degrees above the un-illuminated side of the rings. Some faint spokes can also be spotted in the main rings, made visible by sunlight diffusing through the B ring.</p><p>The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Sept. 15, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn and at a sun-Saturn-spacecraft angle of almost 179 degrees. Image scale is approximately 250 kilometers (155 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08322" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08322: The Janus/Epimetheus Ring sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08322: The Janus/Epimetheus Ring sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08322: The Janus/Epimetheus Ring
<h1>PIA08325: A Twisted Tale</h1><div class="PIA08325" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/figures/PIA08325_fig1.jpg"></a><br />Figure 1</p><p>Saturn's D ring--the innermost of the planet's rings -- sports an intriguing structure that appears to be a wavy, or "vertically corrugated," spiral. This continuously changing ring structure provides circumstantial evidence for a possible recent collision event in the rings.</p><p>Support for this idea comes from the appearance of a structure in the outer D-ring that looks, upon close examination, like a series of bright ringlets with a regularly spaced interval of about 30 kilometers (19 miles). When viewed along a line of sight nearly in the ringplane, a pattern of brightness reversals is observed: a part of the ring that appears bright on the far side of the rings appears dark on the near side of the rings, and vice versa (see <a href="/catalog/PIA08326">PIA08326</a>).</p><p>This phenomenon would occur if the region contains a sheet of fine material that is vertically corrugated, like a tin roof. In this case, variations in brightness would correspond to changing slopes in the rippled ring material (see <a href="/figures/PIA08325_fig1.jpg">figure 1</a>).</p><p>An observation made with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 also saw a periodic structure in the outer D ring, but its wavelength was then 60 kilometers (37 miles). There were insufficient observations to discern the spiral nature of the feature. Thus, it appears the wavelength of the wavy structure has been decreasing: that is, this feature has been winding up like a spring over time.</p><p>The rate at which the pattern appears to be winding up is quite close to the rate scientists would expect for a vertically corrugated spiraling sheet of material at this location in the rings that is responding to gravitational forcing from Saturn.</p><p>As Cassini imaging scientists extrapolated the spiraling trend backward in time, they found that it completely unwound in 1984, leaving only an inclined, or tilted, sheet of material. The researchers speculate such an inclined sheet may have been produced around that time by the impact of a comet or meteoroid into the D ring which kicked out a cloud of fine particles that ultimately inherited some of the tilt of the impactor's trajectory as it slammed into the rings. Another possibility is that the impactor struck an already inclined moonlet, shattered it to bits and the debris remained in an inclined orbit.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08325" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08325: A Twisted Tale sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08325: A Twisted Tale sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08325: A Twisted Tale
<h1>PIA08327: Rounding the Corner</h1><div class="PIA08327" lang="en" style="width:760px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/archive/PIA08327.mov"></a><br />Click on the image for movie of<br />Rounding the Corner</p><p>A movie sequence of Saturn's G ring over a full orbital revolution captures its single bright arc on the ring's inner edge.</p><p>The movie is composed of 70 individual narrow-angle camera images taken during a period of just over 20 hours while Cassini stared at the ring. The orbital period for particles in the center of the G ring is about 19.6 hours.</p><p>At the beginning of the sequence, the ring arc, a site of concentrated ring particles, is seen rounding the ring edge. </p><p>The arc orbits at a distance of 167,496 kilometers (104,080 miles). Itis about 250 kilometers (155 miles) wide in radius and subtends less than 60 degrees of orbital longitude. The classical position of the G ring is about 172,600 kilometers (107,250 miles) from Saturn, and the arc blends smoothly into this region. Scientists suspect that bodies trapped in this remarkably bright feature may be the source of the G ring material, driven outward from the arc by electromagnetic forces in the Saturn system.</p><p>The arc itself is likely held in place by gravitational resonances with Mimas of the type that anchor the famed arcs in Neptune's rings. There is an obvious narrow dark gap in the G ring beyond the arc. This feature is close to yet another resonance with Mimas, but no arcs are present at this locale.</p><p>This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 10 degrees above the ringplane. Imaging artifacts jitter within the scene, a result of the high phase angle and faintness of the G ring. Stars slide across the background from upper left to lower right.</p><p>The images in this movie were taken on Sept. 19 and 20 at a distance of approximately 2.1 to 2.2 million kilometers (1.3 to 1.4 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-G ring-spacecraft, or phase, angle that ranged from 167 to 164 degrees. Image scale is about 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel in the radial (outward from Saturn) direction.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08327" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08327: Rounding the Corner sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08327: Rounding the Corner sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08327: Rounding the Corner
<h1>PIA08328: Moon-Made Rings</h1><div class="PIA08328" lang="en" style="width:508px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/figures/PIA08328_fig1.jpg"></a><br />Figure 1</p><p>This view, acquired with the sun almost directly behind Saturn, reveals a previously unknown faint ring of material coincident with the orbit of the small moon Pallene.</p><p>Another new, diffuse ring seen here was previously announced (see <a href="/catalog/PIA08322">PIA08322</a>), and is coincident with the orbits of Saturn's moons Janus and Epimetheus.</p><p>This viewing geometry makes microscopic, icy ring particles brighten substantially. Cassini spent nearly 12 hours in Saturn's shadow on Sept. 15, 2006, making observations like this one.</p><p>The new Pallene ring is a faint narrow band, about 2,500 kilometers (about 1,550 miles) across, between the E ring and the G ring. The Janus/Epimetheus ring is visible between the G ring and the bright main rings and is about 5,000 kilometer (3,100 miles) wide. A labeled version of this view is also available and shows the locations of these features.</p><p>Pallene, discovered by Cassini's imaging cameras earlier in the mission, is 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) across. Pallene orbits Saturn between the moons Mimas and Enceladus. The bright dot in the Pallene ring is not the tiny moon, but rather is a background star.</p><p>While it is not unexpected that impact events on Janus, Epimetheus, and Pallene might kick particles off the moons' surfaces and inject them into Saturn orbit, it is, however, surprising that these structures are so well-defined.</p><p>The view looks down from about 15 degrees above the dark side of the rings. Some faint spokes can also be spotted in the main rings, made visible by sunlight diffusing through the B ring.</p><p>The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Sept. 15, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft angle of almost 179 degrees. Image scale is approximately 250 kilometers (155 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08328" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08328: Moon-Made Rings sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08328: Moon-Made Rings sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08328: Moon-Made Rings
<h1>PIA08329: In Saturn's Shadow</h1><div class="PIA08329" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/figures/PIA08329_fig1.jpg"></a><a href="/figures/PIA08329_fig2.jpg"></a>Annotated ImageExaggerated Color Contrast</p><p>With giant Saturn hanging in the blackness and sheltering Cassini from the sun's blinding glare, the spacecraft viewed the rings as never before, revealing previously unknown faint rings and even glimpsing its home world.</p><p>This marvelous 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. The full mosaic consists of three rows of nine wide-angle camera footprints; only a portion of the full mosaic is shown here. Color in the view was created by digitally compositing ultraviolet, infrared and clear filter images and was then adjusted to resemble natural color.</p><p>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.</p><p>Ring structures containing these tiny particles brighten substantially at high phase angles: i.e., viewing angles where the sun is almost directly behind the objects being imaged.</p><p>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. (See <a href="/catalog/PIA08322">PIA08322</a> and <a href="/catalog/PIA08328">PIA08328</a> for more on the two new rings.)</p><p>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.</p><p>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. See <a href="/catalog/PIA08324">PIA08324</a> for a similar view of Earth taken during this observation.</p><p>Small grains are pushed about by sunlight and electromagnetic forces. Hence, their distribution tells much about the local space environment. </p><p>A <a href="/tiff/PIA08329_full_res.tif">second version</a> of the mosaic view is presented here in which the color contrast is greatly exaggerated. In such views, imaging scientists have noticed color variations across the diffuse rings that imply active processes sort the particles in the ring according to their sizes.</p><p>Looking at the E ring in this color-exaggerated view, the distribution of color across and along the ring appears to be different between the right side and the left. Scientists are not sure yet how to explain these differences, though the difference in phase angle between right and left may be part of the explanation. The phase angle is about 179 degrees on Saturn.</p><p>The main rings are overexposed in a few places.</p><p>This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 15 degrees above the ringplane.</p><p>Cassini was approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn when the images in this mosaic were taken. Image scale on Saturn is about 260 kilometers (162 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08329" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08329: In Saturn's Shadow sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08329: In Saturn's Shadow sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08329: In Saturn's Shadow
PIA08329_full_res.jpg
PIA08329_full_res.jpg
<h1>PIA08330: New Rings for Cassini's Division</h1><div class="PIA08330" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/figures/PIA08330_fig1.jpg"></a><br />Figure 1</p><p>High-resolution Cassini images show an astonishing level of structure in Saturn's Cassini Division, including two ringlets that were not seen in NASA Voyager spacecraft images 25 years ago. </p><p>This image shows a new ringlet at right, just interior to the bright outer edge of the Cassini Division. This diffuse structure is about 50 kilometers (31 miles) wide. </p><p>The second new ringlet is roughly at center in this view. It is a very narrow feature, about 6 kilometers (4 miles) wide, between the familiar broad bands of material in the Cassini Division, and displays a great deal of variation in brightness along its length. (We include here an annotated version of this image indicating the new rings.)</p><p>This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 9, 2006, at a distance of approximately 414,000 kilometers (257,000 miles) from Saturn. This view looks toward the lit side of the rings from about 17 degrees below the ringplane. The phase angle, or sun-Saturn-spacecraft angle, was 96 degrees. Image scale on the sky at the distance of Saturn is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08330" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08330: New Rings for Cassini's Division sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08330: New Rings for Cassini's Division sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08330: New Rings for Cassini's Division
<h1>PIA08331: New Rings for Cassini's Division</h1><div class="PIA08331" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/figures/PIA08331_fig1.jpg"></a><br />Figure 1</p><p>High-resolution Cassini images show an astonishing level of structure in Saturn's Cassini Division, including two ringlets that were not seen in NASA Voyager spacecraft images 25 years ago. </p><p>This view was taken with the sun almost directly behind Saturn and its rings, a viewing geometry in which microscopic ring particles brighten substantially. The image shows the diffuse new ringlet in the Cassini Division as the brightest feature in that region.</p><p>This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 15, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Saturn. This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 15 degrees above the ringplane. The phase angle, or sun-Saturn-spacecraft angle, was 179 degrees. Image scale on the sky at the distance of Saturn is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08331" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08331: New Rings for Cassini's Division sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08331: New Rings for Cassini's Division sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08331: New Rings for Cassini's Division
<h1>PIA08337: Brilliant Ice Dust</h1><div class="PIA08337" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Lit by reflected light from Saturn, Enceladus appears to hover above the gleaming rings, its well-defined ice particle jets spraying a continuous hail of tiny ice grains. The fine particles coat the moon in a mantle as white as fresh snow and populate the torus, or doughnut-shaped E ring in which Enceladus resides.</p><p>Beyond Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across), the fine particles in Saturn's other rings also glow brilliantly in scattered light in this viewing geometry. Running horizontally across the center of the image, between Enceladus and the dazzlingly bright F ring, are two faint rings -- kin of the E ring. These are the G ring (top) and the recently discovered ring designated R/2006 S1 (bottom), which is also unofficially known as the Janus/Epimetheus ring.</p><p>This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 22, 2006, at a distance of approximately 1.303 million kilometers (810,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 160 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08337" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08337: Brilliant Ice Dust sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08337: Brilliant Ice Dust sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08337: Brilliant Ice Dust
<h1>PIA08340: Shadowlands</h1><div class="PIA08340" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>With its dazzling rings, Saturn radiates a beauty and splendor like no other known world. Here, Cassini has captured the cool crescent of Saturn from above the ringplane, with the planet's shadow cutting neatly across the many lanes of ice.</p><p>Saturn's southern hemisphere is lit on the night side by reflected light from the rings. The rings cast shadows onto the northern daylit hemisphere at the left, and can be seen in silhouette against the faintly illuminated `dark side' of the planet at the right.</p><p>Light reflected inside the camera has left a generally streak-like pattern across the raw images used for this color composite. This pattern appears as multicolor fringes in the final product, but is greatly minimized because of the image processing techniques.</p><p>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 on July 31, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.6 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Saturn and at a sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 163 degrees. Image scale is 153 kilometers (95 miles) per pixel. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08340" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08340: Shadowlands sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08340: Shadowlands sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08340: Shadowlands
<h1>PIA08348: Janus-Epimetheus Swing</h1><div class="PIA08348" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/archive/PIA08348.mov"></a><br />Click on the image for movie of<br />Janus-Epimetheus Swing</p><p>In this movie sequence, Cassini watches Saturn's moon Janus and Epimetheus in their orbital dance as the F ring slides out of view.</p><p>These two moons are locked in a gravitational tango that causes them to swap positions about every four years, with one becoming the innermost of the pair and the other becoming the outermost.</p><p>The movie was created from eight original images taken over the course of 11 minutes as the spacecraft's narrow angle camera remained pointed toward Epimetheus. Although Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across) moves a greater distance across the field of view, Epimetheus (116 kilometers, or 72 miles across) also moved perceptibly during this time. The images were aligned to keep Epimetheus close to the center of the scene. Additional frames were inserted between the eight Cassini images to smooth the appearance of the moons' movement--a scheme called interpolation.</p><p>The images were taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 8, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Janus and 1.7 million kilometers (1 million miles) from Epimetheus. Image scale is 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Janus and 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08348" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08348: Janus-Epimetheus Swing sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08348: Janus-Epimetheus Swing sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08348: Janus-Epimetheus Swing
<h1>PIA08356: The Great Crossing</h1><div class="PIA08356" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/archive/PIA08356.mov"></a><br />Click on the image for the movie<br />The Great Crossing</p><p>This life-like movie sequence captures Saturn's rings during a ring plane crossing -- which Cassini makes twice per orbit -- from the spacecraft's point of view. The movie begins with a view of the sunlit side of the rings. As the spacecraft speeds from south to north, the rings appear to tilt downward and collapse to a thin plane, and then open again to reveal the un-illuminated side of the ring plane, where sunlight filters through only dimly.</p><p>The striking contrast between the sunlit and unlit sides of the ring plane can now be fully appreciated, thanks to the sense of continuity in time and space provided by this brief clip.</p><p>The movie consists of 34 images taken over the course of 12 hours as Cassini pierced the ring plane. Additional frames were inserted between the original images in order to smooth the motion in the sequence -- a scheme called interpolation.</p><p>Six moons careen through the field of view during the sequence. The first large one is Enceladus, whose slanted motion from the upper left to center right nicely illustrates the inclination of its orbit with respect to the rings. The second large one, seen in the second half of the movie, is Mimas, going from right to left.</p><p>This movie begins with a view looking toward the lit side of the rings from about 9 degrees below the ring plane. It ends when the spacecraft is 8 degrees above the ring plane.</p><p>The clear-filter images in this movie sequence were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 17, 2007, at a distance of approximately 900,000 kilometers (500,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 48 kilometers (30 miles) per pixel. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08356" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08356: The Great Crossing sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08356: The Great Crossing sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08356: The Great Crossing
<h1>PIA08361: Ring World</h1><div class="PIA08361" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Our robotic emissary, 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 highest Cassini has yet attained.</p><p>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.</p><p>The planet's shadow carves a dark swath across the ring plane at the right. The overexposed planet has been removed.</p><p>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.</p><p>Bright clumps of material in the narrow F ring moved in their orbits between each of the color exposures, creating a chromatic misalignment that provides some sense of the continuous motion in the ring system.</p><p>Radially extending lens flare artifacts, which result from light being scattered within the camera optics, are present in the view.</p><p>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. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08361" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08361: Ring World sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08361: Ring World sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08361: Ring World
<h1>PIA08388: On the Final Frontier</h1><div class="PIA08388" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Saturn sits nested in its rings of ice as Cassini once again plunges toward the graceful giant.</p><p>This natural color mosaic was acquired by the Cassini spacecraft as it soared 39 degrees above the unilluminated side of the rings.</p><p>Little light makes its way through the rings to be scattered in Cassini's direction in this viewing geometry, making the rings appear somewhat dark compared to the reflective planet. The view can be contrasted with earlier mosaics designed to showcase the rings rather than the planet, which were therefore given longer exposure times (see <a href="/catalog/PIA08362">PIA08362</a> and <a href="/catalog/PIA08361">PIA08361</a>).</p><p>Bright clouds play in the blue-gray skies of the north. The ring shadows continue to caress the planet as they slide farther south toward their momentary disappearance during equinox in 2009. The rings' reflected light illuminates the southern hemisphere on Saturn's night side. </p><p>The scene is reminiscent of the parting glance of NASA's Voyager 1 as it said goodbye to Saturn in 1981 (see <a href="/catalog/PIA00335">PIA00335</a>). Cassini, however, will continue to orbit Saturn for many years to come.</p><p>Three of Saturn's moons are visible in this image: Mimas (397 kilometers, or 247 miles across) at the 2 o'clock position, Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across) at the 4 o'clock position and Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles across) at the 8 o'clock position. Pandora is a faint speck just outside the narrow F ring.</p><p>This mosaic was constructed from wide-angle camera images taken just before the narrow-angle camera mosaic <a href="/catalog/PIA08389">PIA08389</a>.</p><p>The view combines 45 images -- 15 separate sets of red, green and blue images--taken over the course of about two hours, as Cassini scanned across the entire main ring system.</p><p>The images in this view were obtained on May 9, 2007, at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (700,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is about 62 kilometers (39 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08388" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08388: On the Final Frontier sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08388: On the Final Frontier sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08388: On the Final Frontier
<h1>PIA08389: Expanse of Ice</h1><div class="PIA08389" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p><a href="/figures/PIA08389_fig1.jpg"></a><br />Click on the partial image for full view of annotated version</p><p>A scan across Saturn's incredible halo of ice rings yields a study in precision and order. </p><p>This natural color mosaic was acquired by the Cassini spacecraft as it soared 39 degrees above the unilluminated side of the rings.</p><p>Major named gaps are labeled at the top. The main rings themselves, along with the F ring, are labeled at the bottom, along with their inner and outer boundaries.</p><p>This mosaic was constructed from narrow-angle camera images taken immediately after the wide-angle camera mosaic <a href="/catalog/PIA08388">PIA08388</a>. Radial features can be seen in the rings that are about ten times smaller than in the wide-angle view. This scan is rotated 180 degrees compared to <a href="/catalog/PIA08388">PIA08388</a> in order to present the rings with distance from Saturn increasing left to right.</p><p>The view combines 45 images -- 15 separate sets of red, green and blue images -- taken over the course of about 2.5 hours, as Cassini scanned across the rings.</p><p>The images in this view were obtained on May 9, 2007, at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (700,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale in the radial (horizontal) direction is about 6 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08389" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08389: Expanse of Ice sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08389: Expanse of Ice sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08389: Expanse of Ice
<h1>PIA08390: Grace and Beauty</h1><div class="PIA08390" lang="en" style="width:770px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Our robotic explorer Cassini regards the shadow-draped face of Saturn.</p><p>This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 14 degrees above the ringplane. In this viewing geometry all of the main rings, except for the B ring, appear transparent. The rings cast their mirror image onto the planet beyond.</p><p>Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 9, 2007, at a distance of approximately 1.6 million kilometers (972,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 90 kilometers (56 miles) per pixel. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08390" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08390: Grace and Beauty sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08390: Grace and Beauty sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08390: Grace and Beauty
<h1>PIA08393: Rainbow on the Rings</h1><div class="PIA08393" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>The opposition effect, a brightness surge that is visible on Saturn's rings when the sun is directly behind the spacecraft, is captured here as a colorful halo of light moving across Saturn's sunlit rings.</p><p>The rainbow of color seen here is actually an artifact and a by-product of the spot's movement and the way the color image was produced. Cassini acquires color images by taking sequential exposures using red, green and blue spectral filters, which are then composited together to form a color view. The bright patch traveled across the rings between exposures taken for this view, creating a series of three colorful spots showing its position at three separate moments.</p><p>See <a href="/catalog/PIA08247">PIA08247</a> for more information about the opposition effect. <a href="/catalog/PIA08267">PIA08267</a> shows a movie sequence of the bright spot traveling across the rings.</p><p>This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 9 degrees below the ringplane.</p><p>The images in this view were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 12, 2007, at a distance of approximately 523,000 kilometers (325,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 31 kilometers (19 miles) per pixel. </p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08393" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08393: Rainbow on the Rings sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08393: Rainbow on the Rings sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08393: Rainbow on the Rings
<h1>PIA08394: Moon Patrol</h1><div class="PIA08394" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This colorful view, taken from edge-on with the ringplane, contains four of Saturn's attendant moons. Tethys (1,071 kilometers, 665 miles across) is seen against the black sky to the left of the gas giant's limb. Brilliant Enceladus (505 kilometers, 314 miles across) sits against the planet near right. Irregular Hyperion (280 kilometers, 174 miles across) is at the bottom of the image, near left. Much smaller Epimetheus (116 kilometers, 72 miles across) is a speck below the rings directly between Tethys and Enceladus. Epimetheus casts an equally tiny shadow onto the blue northern hemisphere, just above the thin shadow of the F ring.</p><p>Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 24, 2007 at a distance of approximately 2 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 116 kilometers (72 miles) per pixel on Saturn.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08394" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08394: Moon Patrol sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08394: Moon Patrol sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08394: Moon Patrol
<h1>PIA08396: The Painted Globe</h1><div class="PIA08396" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>Saturn in the Cassini era has proved to be an unexpectedly colorful place, compared to the browns and golds imaged by the two Voyager spacecraft. </p><p>Saturn is headed toward equinox in 2009, followed by springtime in the northern hemisphere. Having a spacecraft in orbit while such changes occur will be of great benefit in scientists' quest to understand the atmospheres of the giant planets.</p><p>The planet's oblate, or squashed, shape is clearly visible in this view. The low-density planet rotates so fast (in about 10.5 hours) that it flattens out slightly around its middle. The bluish tint of the northern latitudes is presumed to be a seasonal effect, and will likely disappear entirely as the north receives increasingly greater amounts of sunlight. </p><p>Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 29, 2007 at a distance of approximately 3.1 million kilometers (2 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 184 kilometers (115 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org">http://ciclops.org</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08396" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08396: The Painted Globe sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08396: The Painted Globe sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08396: The Painted Globe
<h1>PIA08412: Unrolling the F-ring</h1><div class="PIA08412" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>The complex structure of Saturn's quirky F ring is unfurled in this mosaic made up of images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.</p><p>The mosaic covers 255 degrees of longitude within the F ring, which represents about 70 percent of the ring's circumference around Saturn. From top to bottom, the mosaic represents an area 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) in radial width. </p><p>The 107 images used to create the mosaic were processed to make the ring appear as if it has been straightened, making it easier to see the ring's structure. Here, the vertical axis represents distance from Saturn and the horizontal axis represents longitude around Saturn. This frame of reference is centered on the bright core of the F ring, at the vertical center of the mosaic. In this system, the core is considered to be stationary; objects closer to Saturn (or below vertical center) move toward right, and objects farther from Saturn (here, above the core) move toward left.</p><p>Ring scientists now understand a great deal about what causes the various features in the ring. In addition to the powerful perturbing effect of the moon prometheus (<a href="/catalog/PIA07750">PIA07750</a>), there is thought to be a population of small objects in the F-ring region that interact with the ring's core to produce the structures seen (see <a href="/catalog/PIA07716">PIA07716</a>). Two of the images had flaws, which caused the vertical lines seen on the right side of the mosaic. There is also a faint, roughly vertical, wavelike pattern in the view, which is an artifact of the process used to straighten the ring's shape. </p><p>The clear spectral filter images in this mosaic were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 31, 2007, at a distance of about 2 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) from Saturn.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov" class="external free" target="wpext">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org" class="external free" target="wpext">http://ciclops.org</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08412" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08412: Unrolling the F-ring sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08412: Unrolling the F-ring sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08412: Unrolling the F-ring
<h1>PIA08414: Perspective on Saturn</h1><div class="PIA08414" lang="en" style="width:800px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>The ringed planet sits in repose, the center of its own macrocosm of many rings and moons and one artificial satellite named Cassini. Mimas (397 kilometers, or 247 miles across) is visible at upper left. Although unseen in this view, Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) casts its shadow upon the planet. The rings also block the sun's light from the low latitudes of the northern hemisphere. </p><p>During Cassini's extended mission, dubbed the Cassini Equinox Mission, which begins on July 1, 2008, the ring shadows will slip past the planet's equator and into the southern hemisphere as Saturn passes through its northern vernal equinox on August 11, 2009, and the sun moves northward through the ring plane.</p><p>This view looks down on the un-illuminated side of the rings from about 22 degrees above (north of) the ring plane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Dec. 16, 2007, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 86 kilometers (53 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov" class="external free" target="wpext">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org" class="external free" target="wpext">http://ciclops.org</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08414" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08414: Perspective on Saturn sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08414: Perspective on Saturn sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08414: Perspective on Saturn
<h1>PIA08415: Saturn ... Four Years Later</h1><div class="PIA08415" lang="en" style="width:720px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>New hues are creeping into Saturn's northern cloud bands as winter gives way to spring there. </p><p>During its first four years of exploration, Cassini has made the Saturn system a familiar place to us Earthlings. The intrepid craft has returned more than 150,000 images since arriving in orbit in mid-2004. In this natural color image, the blues and grays of Saturn's northern hemisphere, so striking in early Cassini images, are diminishing in intensity with the slow change of seasons on Saturn, and are almost imperceptibly being replaced by pale shades of the colors commonly seen by Cassini in the planet's southern hemisphere.</p><p>This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about less than a degree below the ring plane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on April 23, 2008, at a distance of approximately 1.2 million kilometers (740,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 68 kilometers (42 miles) per pixel.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov" class="external free" target="wpext">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/</a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at <a href="http://ciclops.org" class="external free" target="wpext">http://ciclops.org</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08415" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08415: Saturn ... Four Years Later sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08415: Saturn ... Four Years Later sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08415: Saturn ... Four Years Later
<h1>PIA08734: Saturn's Light from Within</h1><div class="PIA08734" lang="en" style="width:646px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This false-color image of Saturn shows ring shadows running across the upper portion of the planet, and sunlight illuminating the lower portion of the planet. </p><p>The upper area, in the ring shadow, would be black in visible light but glows red in infrared because Saturn is warm inside. This light shines out through the clouds, giving scientists a look at some of Saturn's interesting atmospheric structure. </p><p>This image was taken on June 30, 2006, with Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer. It was constructed from images taken at wavelengths of 0.91 microns shown in blue, 2.25 microns shown in green, and at 5.01 microns shown in red. The distance from Cassini to Saturn's center in this image is 335,000 kilometers (208,159 miles).</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona where this image was produced.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a> The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at <a href="http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu">http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08734" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08734: Saturn's Light from Within sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08734: Saturn's Light from Within sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08734: Saturn's Light from Within
<h1>PIA08735: Saturn's Kaleidoscope of Color</h1><div class="PIA08735" lang="en" style="width:667px;text-align:left;margin:auto;background-color:#000;padding:10px;max-height:150px;overflow:auto;"><p>This false-color image of Saturn was constructed by combining three images at three different infrared wavelengths. </p><p>The image at the upper left was taken at 1.3 microns, where both Saturn and its rings strongly reflect light. The center image in the top panel was taken at 2.4 microns, where the rings strongly reflect light, but Saturn, because of the methane in its atmosphere, absorbs most of the light. The third image on the right in the panel was taken at a wavelength of 5 microns where, because they are composed of almost pure water ice, the rings absorb almost all the light, and Saturn, because its interior is warm, glows. Assigning each of the three images to blue, green and red, respectively, results in the beautiful, false-color, composite image shown below.</p><p>These images were taken on June 21, 2004, with Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer at a distance of 6.35 million kilometers (3.94 million miles) from Saturn.</p><p>The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona where this image was produced.</p><p>For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission <a href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov">http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm</a> The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at <a href="http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu">http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu</a>.</p><br /><br /><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08735" onclick="window.open(this.href); return false;" title="Voir l'image PIA08735: Saturn's Kaleidoscope of Color sur le site de la NASA">Voir l'image PIA08735: Saturn's Kaleidoscope of Color sur le site de la NASA.</a></div>
PIA08735: Saturn's Kaleidoscope of Color