Variations in ring particle concentration give Saturn's brilliant rings
the appearance of ripples in a pond in this close-up view. Many of the
gaps and wavelike patterns elsewhere in the rings are due to the
gravitational influence of Saturn's moons, but the origin of much of the
structure in the B ring seen here is still unexplained.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on
Oct. 29, 2004, at a distance of approximately 824,000 kilometers (512,000
miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) per
pixel. The image has been slightly contrast-enhanced 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 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 and the Cassini imaging team home page,
http://ciclops.org.