NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Collection

In the Shadow of Saturn

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

CICLOPS [ http://ciclops.org/], JPL [ http://www.jpl.nasa…], ESA [ http://www.esa.int/], NASA [ http://www.nasa.gov/]

Saturn

Enceladus

Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

Earth

Moon

Sun

Saturn

Cassini

Enceladus

http://antwrp.gsfc.…

SPD-APOD-ap061016