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| NASA's Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of Saturn, taken while the spacecraft was in Saturn's shadow. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute |
Just in time for the holidays, NASA's Cassini
spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn for more than eight years now, has delivered
another glorious, backlit view of the planet Saturn and its rings.
On Oct. 17, 2012, during its 174th orbit around the gas giant,
Cassini was deliberately positioned within Saturn's shadow, a perfect location
from which to look in the direction of the sun and take a backlit view of the
rings and the dark side of the planet. Looking back towards the sun is a
geometry referred to by planetary scientists as "high solar phase;"
near the center of your target's shadow is the highest phase possible. This is
a very scientifically advantageous and coveted viewing position, as it can
reveal details about both the rings and atmosphere that cannot be seen in lower
solar phase.
The last time Cassini had such an unusual
perspective on Saturn and its rings, at sufficient distance and with sufficient
time to make a full system mosaic, occurred in September 2006, when it captured
a mosaic, processed to look like natural color, entitled "In Saturn's Shadow."
In that mosaic, planet Earth put in a special appearance, making "In
Saturn's Shadow" one of the most popular Cassini images to date.
The mosaic being released today by the mission and the imaging
team, in celebration of the 2012 holiday season, does not contain Earth; along
with the sun, our planet is hidden behind Saturn. However, it was taken when
Cassini was closer to Saturn and therefore shows more detail in the rings than
the one taken in 2006.
The new processed mosaic, composed of 60
images taken in the violet, visible and near infrared part of the spectrum, can
be found at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini , http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://ciclops.org .
"Of all the many glorious images we have received from
Saturn, none are more strikingly unusual than those taken from Saturn's
shadow," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini's imaging team lead based at the
Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA,
the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's 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. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed,
developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from
the U.S., England, France and Germany. The imaging operations center is based
at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
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