* Astronomy

The Cassini spacecraft imaged Saturn's ring system in the infrared from a vantage point high above the planet's northern latitudes on April 5, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometres. Nearly the full expanse of the main rings is visible here -- from the C ring to the outer edge of the A ring (in the upper left corner).
Ring shadows are visible on the planet at lower left, and two large storms swirl near the centre.
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 52 degrees above the ringplane.


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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centred at 752 (red channel), 890 (blue channel) and 728 (green channel) nanometers. Image scale is 81 kilometres per pixel.

This image of Saturns rings was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on May 11, 2007, when it was approximately 777,933 kilometres away.


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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The image was taken using the MT2 and CL2 filters.

This image of Saturn and it's rings was taken by the Cassini spaceprobe on April 12, 2007.



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Credit NASA

The moon Pan can been seen near the centre of the image approximately 1,479,247 kilometres away.
Pan is about 20 30 kilometres across and orbits within the Encke division in Saturn's A Ring
The image was taken using the CL1 and CL2 filters.

The Cassini spacecraft gazes toward a distant star as Saturn's rings slip past in the foreground. At upper left is the outer A ring, with its dark Keeler Gap. At lower right, a train of bright clumps shuttles past in the wispy F ring.
A temporal sequence of images like this allows Cassini scientists to correlate features in the rings with stellar occultation data acquired by other instruments. As the star passes behind the rings, the changes in its brightness indicate how much empty space is between particles at different locations on the rings.


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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This view looks toward the lit side of the rings from about 56 degrees below the ringplane.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 30, 2006 at a distance of approximately 633,440 kilometres from Saturn. Image scale is 4 kilometres per pixel.