In the Shadow of Saturn’s Rings

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science
Saturn?s rings cast threadlike shadows on the planet?s northern hemisphere. Note the translucent C ring and thin, outermost F ring. The image was taken with the narrow angle camera in visible light on May 10, 2004 at a distance of 27.2 million kilometers (16.9 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 162 kilometers (101 miles) per pixel. Contrast in the image was enhanced to aid visibility.

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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.