Media Information

 
 
 
Collection:
NASA Planetary Photo Journal Collection
Title:
Saturn Shine
Original Caption Released with Image:
This view looks down onto the unlit side of Saturn's ringplane. It nicely shows a near-arm/far-arm brightness asymmetry in the B ring: The near arm of the B ring (in the lower half of the image) is notably darker from this viewing geometry than is the far arm (above).

Imaging scientists believe this to be a manifestation of the reflection of light from the disk of Saturn falling predominantly on the far arm of the rings. (At the time this image was taken, Cassini was more or less on the dark side of the planet.) As the B ring is the thickest part of Saturn's rings, it scatters less sunlight from below, and reflects more Saturn shine from above, than either the A or C rings, making the effect look more dramatic in the B ring.

Two small moons appear in this scene as well: Atlas (32 kilometers, or 20 miles across) is visible above and left of center and outside the A ring; Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles across) can be seen near upper right beyond the F ring. Between the two moons lie multiple clumps of material in the F ring.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 25, 2006 at a distance of approximately 1 million kilometers (600,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraf t, or phase, angle of 128 degrees. Image scale is 58 kilometers (36 miles) per pixel.

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.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Produced By:
Cassini Imaging Team
Mission:
Cassini
Spacecraft:
Cassini Orbiter
Target Name:
S Rings
Is a satellite of:
Saturn
Instrument:
Imaging Science Subsystem - Wide Angle
Product Size:
1020 samples x 907 lines
Primary Data Set:
Cassini
facet_what:
Sun
facet_what:
Atlas
facet_what:
Saturn
facet_what:
Cassini
facet_what:
Visible Light
facet_what:
Cassini Orbiter
facet_what:
Huygens Probe
facet_what:
Cassini-Huygens
facet_what:
Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
facet_where:
Saturn
facet_where:
California
facet_where:
Washington
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
facet_where:
Washington, D.C.
facet_when:
July 25, 2006
facet_when_year:
2006
Image #:
PIA08253
UID:
SPD-PHOTJ-PIA08253
orignial url:

Saturn Shine