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Sunlit Saturn shows off its rings

Cassini snaps the perfect photo-shot.

This September brought a fantastic photo opportunity for Cassini, the spacecraft in orbit around Saturn. Its trajectory brought it into the ringed planet's shadow for about 12 hours, giving it a striking view with the Sun lying directly behind.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on October 12, 2006 07:00 PM |

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A nice shot, but what happened with one of the rings: It is masked by Saturn´s northpole and southpole?

Any explanation?
Cheers.

Posted by: Marcus Anhaeuser | October 13, 2006 09:42 AM

It is quite an interesting picture. If you look more closely, saturn appears as a bubble through which you can see rings sepearately, not as surroundings (moons) of the saturn. Note the lifted markings on the planet itself from the real orbits. Saturn in fact might be one of the stars in that orbit which lies far closer than rest of them. Please discuss it further if interested.

Jaswinder Kaur PhD
Enviresearch,
the nanotechnology centre,
Newcastle upon tyne, England.

Posted by: Jaswinder Kaur | October 13, 2006 01:04 PM

Stunning picture.

We seem to be seeing a few broad, soft, somewhat radial features above and below the main body of rings in this image. Are these features genuine, or are they artifacts of the image processing? And, if they are genuine, would anyone care to hazard an explanation of what they are? To these eyes, they resemble the famous ring "spokes," but on a much grander scale.

Posted by: Miki Dora | October 14, 2006 01:54 PM

oh, yes that´s right. Sometimes it remembers me of an loupe like in a imaging software, with wich you can zoom a part of a picture. That´s not without a ironic touch.

But, are there any "natural" explanations for this phenomenon. Perhaps the editors could ask the JPL-Scientists.

Posted by: Marcus Anhaeuser | October 15, 2006 10:18 AM

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