
Saturn

by NASA Science Source
Title
Saturn
Artist
NASA Science Source
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
Image obtained by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft of Saturn. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Enhances version with exaggerated color contrast.
Uploaded
March 14th, 2013
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