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| Across Resplendent Rings | ||||||||||||
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| The shadow of Saturn's moon Mimas dips onto the planet's rings and straddles the Cassini Division in this natural color image taken as Saturn approaches its August 2009 equinox. The novel illumination geometry created as the Saturnian system approaches equinox allows moons orbiting in or near the plane of Saturn's equatorial rings to cast shadows onto the rings. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn's equinox which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 52 degrees below the ringplane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on April 8, 2009 at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (684,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 64 kilometers (40 miles) per pixel. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
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| Image 3 of 65 20090622193510503 |
Mon Jun 22, 2009 at 19:35 UTC |
Uploaded By: Space Spin |
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Cassini Titan flyby (T-72):
14 days, 9 hours, 53 minutes
EPOXI comet Hartley 2 flyby:
55 days
Cassini Titan flyby (T-73):
62 days, 4 hours, 53 minutes
