25 March 2007
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Orbiting Saturn since July 2004, the international Cassini spacecraft acquired a natural-color image of Saturn's planetary twin, Jupiter.
As seen from Saturn orbit, Jupiter shines as a banded orb, with red, white and brown cloud bands. Jupiter was about 1,800 million km from Cassini. The Earth was at a considerably smaller distance when Cassini imaged it in September 2006. However, in that picture, our blue living Earth was only about a pixel wide.
This is not the first time Cassini observes Jupiter. In December 2000, Cassini observed Jupiter from a much closer range, when it flew by the mighty planet for a gravity assist.
Red, green and blue spectral filters were applied to create this natural color composite image. It was taken with Cassini's narrow-angle camera on 8 February 2007. The phase, or Sun-Jupiter spacecraft, angle was 50°.
Image scale in the original image was about 10,000 km per pixel. The image was contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of 2.
Further reading
Cassini-Huygens Mission
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
A Distant Blue Planet
http://www.bibalex.org/eclipse2006/News_Details.aspx?id=133
Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Senior Astronomy Specialist