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Up and Over
PIA 20481
Avg Rating: 9.82/10
Full Size 1020x1020:
JPEG 102 KB
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TIFF 355 KB
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Cassini orbited in Saturn's ring plane -- around the planet's equator -- for most of 2015. This enabled a season of flybys of the planet's icy moons, but did not allow for angled views of the rings and the planet's poles, like this one. But in early 2016, the spacecraft began to increase its orbital inclination, climbing higher over the poles in preparation for the mission's final spectacular orbits in 2017.
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 16 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 26 2016 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.7 million miles (2.8 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 103 miles (165 kilometers) per pixel.
The Cassini Solstice Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. 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 Solstice Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Released: May 30, 2016 (PIA 20481)
Image/Caption Information |
Alliance Member Comments
there's that hexagon again.
as an old school mechanic, i can't help but wonder, if you could put a wrench on that hex, could you unscrew it and take the planet apart?
what are the dimensions across the flats? (I'll check my tool box.)
i look forward to seeing some closer images of the north pole before mission end.
what is happening there is fascinating.
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