Astronomy Picture of the Day -- In the Shadow of Saturn

NASA ^ | September 04, 2011 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours in 2006 and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA]

[SunkenCiv]

join or quit list APoD 'blog post new APoD topic Astronomy Picture of the Day topic & keyword Astronomy Chat, Bloggers & keyword Science Chat, Bloggers & keyword NASA's APoD archive Calendar 1995-present APoD on your desktop

[Cheetahcat]

Very Cool thank you !

[Jonty30]

That almost looks like a photo negative.

[bigheadfred]

That almost looks like a photo negative.

Wait till Joe gets done with it.

[bigheadfred]

Re: Forward scattering. The camera never lies. The quantum camera never lies. Twice? Perhaps only interferomically.

http://departments.colgate.edu/physics/research/Photon/root/photon_quantum_mechanics.htm

And maybe the inference is only the sound of a wind-blown horse that is really my cousin running thru the sage brush trying to scream—Revenooers...

[Winstons Julia]

I don’t see Earth. And I have a desire to microwave something.

[tsowellfan]

Will we ever have any craft going to the Zeta Reticuli system?

[momtothree]

Very cool! The rings are just awesome!

[left that other site]

Awesome!

[kidd]

Very cool.
Hard to tell Earth from the dust on my monitor

[martin_fierro]

Cool! Thanks!

Makes great wallpaper.

[TheOldLady]

Earth:

[TheOldLady]

Here’s a better picture. Click it for a larger view:

http://129.164.179.22/apod/image/0901/newrings_cassini_big.jpg

[TheOldLady]

Wow back to the ASTRONOMY-POD in the most spectacular fashion possible. This is a great one, a gorgeous picture.

[cicero2k]

This has to be one of the top 10 APOD of all time.

Above and left of the earth I think I see the belt of Orion.

It helps to have an iPad for viewing this.

[ixtl]

An excellent picture. Thannks, SunkenCiv for your efforts to bring us these wonders.

[JoeProBono]

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, all!

[dr_lew]

Here's a view of the sun from Saturn on Sept 15, 2006, the day the images were taken. The sun is in Capricorn, with Orion out of view. Many of the raw images show the stars better than the composite, but I haven't been able to make the correspondence to my "Starry Night" view.