Shadows cast by Saturn's rings separate the planet's bright equatorial
band from the darker northern latitudes.
This view makes use of a spectral filter sensitive to absorption of
certain wavelengths of light by methane in Saturn's atmosphere. In the
north, the light at these wavelengths reaches slightly greater depth
before being reflected off the cloud tops, compared to the equatorial
region -- and it passes through more light-absorbing methane along the
way.
The innermost rings arc across the lower left corner.
The view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 37
degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini
spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 18, 2008 using a spectral filter
sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 890 nanometers.
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.
