In this fabulous close-up, Cassini peers directly through regions of the
A, B and C rings (from top to bottom here) to glimpse shadows of the very
same rings cast upon the planet's atmosphere. Near the top, shadows cast
by ringlets in the Cassini division (center) look almost like a photo
negative.
This type of image helps scientists probe the rings' structure in detail
and provides information about the density of their constituent particles.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on April 26, 2005, at a distance of approximately 2.3
million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Saturn. The 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 team is based at the Space Science
Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
