Sunday, January 11, 2009

Saturn

Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA
Explanation: In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.

4 comments:

Brooke said...

It's amazing how much beauty we uncover as our understanding of science grows.

Eyes said...

It seems like there's no end to it!

BB-Idaho said...

Extraordinary! When I was a kid back in Sputnik days, I read all the von Braun books. The paintings by Chesley Bonestell
were imaginative and prescient. What we imagined....IS! :)

The Merry Widow said...

Eerily beautiful...

tmw