Post by Sowelu on Mar 14, 2007 5:54:29 GMT -5
Saturn eclipsing the sun, seen from behind from the Cassini orbiter. The image is a composite assembled from images taken by the Cassini spacecraft on 15 September, 2006.
Individual rings seen include (in order, starting from most distant)For a detailed description, see NASA Photojournal and NASA Saturn News Release.
- E ring
- Pallene ring (visible very faintly in an arc just below Saturn)
- G ring
- Janus/Epimetheus ring (faint)
- F ring (narrow brightest feature)
- Main rings (A,B,C)
- D ring (bluish, nearest Saturn)
And from October 16, 2006...
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Explanation: In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.
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antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061016.html
