The clumpy disturbed appearance of the brilliant F ring constantly
changes. The irregular structure of the ring is due, in large part, to the
gravitational perturbations on the ring material by one of Saturn's moons,
Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across).
Interior to the F ring, the A ring bears a striking resemblance to a
classic grooved, vinyl record. Visible here are the Keeler gap (42
kilometers, or 26 miles wide) and the Encke gap (325 kilometers, or 200
miles wide).
The image was taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of
infrared light centered at 862 nanometers. The view was acquired with the
Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 26, 2006 at a distance of
approximately 1.5 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Saturn and at a
Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 141 degrees. Image scale is 8
kilometers (5 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.