CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
The Rings' Variety

This expansive view takes in most of Saturn's main ring system, from the outer C ring to the narrow and knotted-looking F ring. The broad brightness plateaus in the C ring (at bottom) transform into the more densely populated (and thus darker in this viewing geometry) B ring. The rings' appearance becomes brighter and smoother beyond the bands of the Cassini Division, in the A ring.

This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 49 degrees above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible blue light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 21, 2006 at a distance of approximately 539,000 kilometers (335,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 98 degrees. Image scale is 29 kilometers (18 miles) per pixel.

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 Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

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

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: December 27, 2006 (PIA 08840)
Image/Caption Information 		  The Rings' Variety
PIA 08840
Avg Rating: 7.82/10

Full Size 822x1015:
JPEG 100 KB
PNG 328 KB
TIFF 836 KB