The "opposition effect" can be seen in this image of Saturn's B ring. The
bright spot occurs where the angle between the spacecraft, the Sun and the
rings is near zero. Studies of the opposition effect on Saturn's rings may
help scientists constrain some of the properties of ring particles, such
as their sizes and spatial distribution.
Another recently released image from Cassini also shows this interesting
effect of viewing geometry (see PIA07543).
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
wide-angle camera on June 26, 2005, at a distance of approximately
478,000 kilometers (297,000 miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 3
kilometers (2 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 team is based at the Space Science
Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.