08 September 2010
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
NASA recently published a mesmerizing image of Saturn, the ringed wonderful planet. The image was acquired by the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft. Cassini was looking on Saturn, from about 30 degrees above the plane of its magnificent rings. Interestingly, the shadow of the rings, cast on Saturn’s colorful cloud tops, is very thin, as the Sun was nearly aligned with the plane of the rings.
As the plane of Saturn’s rings lies in the equatorial plane of the planet, the Sun is aligned with the plane of the rings twice, every Saturnian year, at the beginning of spring and the beginning of autumn. Therefore, the Sun shines near the ringplane, around the dates of Saturn’s equinoxes.
Images taken in red, green and blue filters were combined to produce this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera, on 18 July 2009, at a distance of approximately 2.1 million km from Saturn.
References
Cassini Mission Homepage
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/
NASA’s Photojournal
Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Senior Astronomy Specialist