The fine, dust-sized particles of ice in the F ring and Encke Gap ringlets
appear relatively bright, with the rings positioned almost directly
between the Cassini spacecraft and the Sun.
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 2
degrees above the ringplane. At bottom, the planet's shadow casts the
rings into darkness.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
wide-angle camera on Oct. 24, 2007. The view was obtained at a distance of
approximately 298,000 kilometers (185,000 miles) from Saturn and at a
Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 152 degrees. Image scale is 14
kilometers (9 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.