The great planet Saturn reveals mysteries more profound, and stories more
grand, than those occasioned by its ancient mythological namesake.
The giant planet is a moody world whose disposition appears to change with
the view. Its atmosphere rages with thunderous and hurricane-like storms.
Its majestic rings spin a tale of ancient collisions and cataclysm. And
its moons may hold secrets to the origins of life.
This view looks toward the lit side of the rings from about 28 degrees
below the ring plane.
The image was taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of
infrared light centered at 890 nanometers. The view was acquired with the
Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 30, 2007, at a distance of
approximately 1.1 million kilometers (700,000 miles) from Saturn. Image
scale is 60 kilometers (38 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.