Two weeks after orbit insertion, Cassini glanced back at Saturn, taking
in the entire planet and its expansive rings. Currently it is summer in
Saturn's southern hemisphere. Notable here is the bright spot located
near the planet's southern hemisphere, where the line from the day and
night side of the planet meets. The angle of illumination hints at
Saturn's tilt relative to the Sun.
The image was taken in visible red light with the Cassini spacecraft wide
angle camera on July 13, 2004, from a distance of about 5 million
kilometers (3.1 million miles) from Saturn. The Sun-Saturn-spacecraft,
or phase angle of this image is 95 degrees. The image scale is 299
kilometers (186 miles) per pixel. Contrast has been enhanced slightly
to aid visibility.
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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space
Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras,
were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based
at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit,
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page,
http://ciclops.org.