This high-phase image from the Cassini spacecraft shows dark areas
separating faint spokes that are brighter than the rest of Saturn's B
ring.
At a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 122 degrees, light is
scattered from the dusty spokes toward Cassini's cameras. See PIA10567 to
learn more about spokes. The shadow of Saturn cuts across the bottom of
the image. Several background stars are visible.
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 39
degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the
Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 24, 2009. The view was
obtained at a distance of approximately 887,000 kilometers (551,000 miles)
from Saturn. Image scale is 50 kilometers (31 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/. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.