Saturn and its rings completely fill the field of view of Cassini's
narrow angle camera in this natural color image taken on March 27, 2004.
This is the last single 'eyeful' of Saturn and its rings achievable with
the narrow angle camera on approach to the planet. From now until orbit
insertion, Saturn and its rings will be larger than the field of view of
the narrow angle camera.
Color variations between atmospheric bands and features in the
southern hemisphere of Saturn, as well as subtle color differences
across the planet's middle B ring, are now more distinct than ever.
Color variations generally imply different compositions. The nature
and causes of any compositional differences in both the atmosphere and
the rings are major questions to be investigated by Cassini scientists
as the mission progresses.
The bright blue sliver of light in the northern hemisphere is sunlight
passing through the Cassini Division in Saturn's rings and being scattered
by the cloud-free upper atmosphere.
Two faint dark spots are visible in the southern hemisphere. These
spots are close to the latitude where Cassini saw two storms merging
in mid-March. The fate of the storms visible here is unclear. They are
getting close and will eventually merge or squeeze past each other.
Further analysis of such dynamic systems in Saturn's atmosphere will
help scientists understand their origins and complex interactions.
Moons visible in this image are (clockwise from top right): Enceladus
(499 kilometers or 310 miles across), Mimas (398 kilometers or 247 miles
across), Tethys (1060 kilometers or 659 miles across) and Epimetheus (116
kilometers or 72 miles across). Epimetheus is dim and appears just above
the left edge of the rings. Brightnesses have been exaggerated to aid
visibility.
The image is a composite of three exposures, in red, green and blue,
taken when the spacecraft was 47.7 million kilometers (29.7 million
miles) from the planet. The image scale is 286 kilometers (178 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 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.
