Our robotic explorer Cassini regards the shadow-draped face of Saturn.
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 14
degrees above the ringplane. In this viewing geometry all of the main
rings, except for the B ring, appear transparent. The rings cast their
mirror image onto the planet beyond.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to
create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini
spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 9, 2007, at a distance of
approximately 1.6 million kilometers (972,000 miles) from Saturn. Image
scale is 90 kilometers (56 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.
