CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
At A Tilt

At A Tilt
PIA 08370
Avg Rating: 8.78/10

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   Colorful Saturn tilts its darkened ringplane toward Cassini. Against the dark sky, the rings are made visible by the light that scatters through them toward the camera.

The F ring shepherd moon Pandora (81 kilometers, 50 miles across) is faintly visible at the top, left of center. Pandora's brightness was increased by a factor of three to aid its visibility.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 18 degrees above the ringplane. The planet is visible through the innermost and outermost portions of the rings.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained by the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on April 13, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 108 kilometers (67 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: May 8, 2007 (PIA 08370)
Image/Caption Information


Alliance Member Comments
tiger_hunt (May 19, 2007 at 2:49 AM):
This is a most striking photo. It reminds me of a quote: “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being.” Sir Isaac Newton, Principia, 1687
Moonsister (May 18, 2007 at 7:58 PM):
Never have I seen Saturn's rings look so..warm. The brown color is stunning, is it from dirt on the icy bulders and rocky stuff orbitng Saturn? Makes Saturn look like an old friend, the warmpth of it.
vista (May 14, 2007 at 2:10 PM):
This is truly a great image one can image travelling sometime in the future, and approaching the planet saturn, with views like this, it will amazing to travel out to our neighbouring planets

Vista
Red_dragon (May 9, 2007 at 1:47 AM):
One unique word to describe this image: fantastic. I'll never be able to thank you for the enjoyment I've when seeing images like this one; Saturn will never be the same.