Ring Shadows

Posted on Saturday 4 December 2004 to unknown

This image has been around for a few days now but I did finally get around to posting it. I reckon it's the purtiest picture of Saturn released by NASA for a while. It's amazing what a little colour can do.


Click here to see a high resolution version of the image.

In a splendid portrait created by light and gravity, Saturn's lonely moon Mimas is seen against the cool, blue-streaked backdrop of Saturn's northern hemisphere. Delicate shadows cast by the rings arc gracefully across the planet, fading into darkness on Saturn's night side.

The part of the atmosphere seen here appears darker and more bluish than the warm brown and gold hues seen in Cassini images of the southern hemisphere, due to preferential scattering of blue wavelengths by the cloud-free upper atmosphere.

The bright blue swath near Mimas (398 kilometers, or 247 miles across) is created by sunlight passing through the Cassini division (4,800 kilometers, or 2,980 miles wide). The rightmost part of this distinctive feature is slightly overexposed and therefore bright white in this image. Shadows of several thin ringlets within the division can be seen here as well. The dark band that stretches across the center of the image is the shadow of Saturn's B ring, the densest of the main rings. Part of the actual Cassini division appears at the bottom, along with the A ring and the narrow, outer F ring. The A ring is transparent enough that, from this viewing angle, the atmosphere and threadlike shadows cast by the inner C ring are visible through it.

Images taken with red, green and blue filters were combined to create this color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Nov. 7, 2004, at a distance of 3.7 million kilometers (2.3 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 22 kilometers (14 miles) per pixel.

Having trouble telling your Encke Gap from your C Ring? This anatomy chart might help

An even better run down on the structure of Saturn's rings can be found here.

In other space news, a single piece of breakfast cereal (Kellogg's Nutri-Grain) which has an uncanny resemblance to E.T. has been auctioned on eBay for $1035.

Money Quote: "I just didn't think it would go this far," he said. "I was just trying to find someone who feels the same way about E.T. as they do about the Virgin Mary."