These side-by-side views of a star seen through Saturn's densely populated
B ring show marked contrast between the region where spokes -- the ghostly
radial features periodically seen in the B ring -- are produced and
regions where no spokes are seen.
In the view at left, the ring displays an uneven grainy texture, with a
great deal of variability in brightness along the direction of ring
particle motion. In the view at right, the ring is far smoother and more
uniform along the same longitudinal direction.
Ring scientists on the Cassini Imaging Team are studying images such as
these to understand the processes by which spokes are created. This
difference in appearance from one location to another on the ring could
provide the researchers with helpful insights into the features'
formation.
The views were acquired about half an hour apart as the Cassini spacecraft
looked toward the unlit side of the rings from about 33 degrees above the
ringplane.
The images were taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on Sept. 26, 2006 at a distance of approximately
515,000 kilometers (320,000 miles) from Saturn and at a
Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 102 degrees. Image scale is
about 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 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.