Saturn's rings throw imposing shadows and relegate parts of the planet's
northern regions to darkness. Three thin and bright arcs in this scene
represent three well-known gaps in the immense ring system. From bottom
to top here (and widest to thinnest) they are the Cassini Division, the
Encke Gap and the Keeler Gap.
The image was taken in infrared light (752 nanometers) using the Cassini
spacecraft wide-angle camera on Oct. 29, 2005, at a distance of
approximately 446,000 kilometers (277,000 miles) from Saturn. The image
scale is 23 kilometers (14 miles) per pixel. The image was contrast
enhanced to improve visibility of features in the atmosphere.
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. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at
http://ciclops.org.