Cassini Takes Image of Saturn's Rings

PASADENA, Calif. - The international Cassini spacecraft sent back a natural-color image of Saturn showing the planet's rings are shades of pink, gray and a bit of brown, scientists announced Thursday.

The image was taken June 21, a few days before the spacecraft entered orbit, from 4 million miles below the rings.

The rings are mostly ice, which is white if it is pure. Researchers at NASA (news - web sites)'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory believe the different colors reflect the presence of other materials, such as rock or carbon compounds.

Detailed close-ups sent immediately after Cassini entered orbit on June 30 were in black and white. Another vivid set of ring images released previously used infrared photography.

The seven major rings are named A through G, although they are not arrayed in alphabetical order.

The brightest part of the new image is the B ring, a nearly 16,000-mile-wide ring that has many bands with a distinct sandy color.

Color variations in the rings were previously seen by the Hubble Space Telescope (news - web sites) and the Voyager spacecraft that flew past Saturn in 1980 and 1981. But the variations are more distinct as seen from Cassini, NASA said.

Cassini is the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn. The $3.3 billion mission is a joint project of NASA and the European and Italian space agencies.

Original Caption Released with Image:
Nine days before it entered orbit, Cassini spacecraft captured this exquisite natural color view of Saturn's rings. The images that make up this composition were obtained from Cassini's vantage point beneath the ring plane with the narrow angle camera on June 21, 2004, at a distance of 6.4 million kilometers (4 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 38 kilometers (23 miles) per pixel.

The brightest part of the rings, curving from the upper right to the lower left in the image, is the B ring. Many bands throughout the B ring have a pronounced sandy color. Other color variations across the rings can be seen. Color variations in Saturn's rings have previously been seen in Voyager and Hubble Space Telescope images. Cassini's images show that color variations in the rings are more pronounced in this viewing geometry than they are when seen from Earth.

Saturn's rings are made primarily of water ice. Since pure water ice is white, it is believed that different colors in the rings reflect different amounts of contamination by other materials such as rock or carbon compounds. In conjunction with information from other Cassini instruments, Cassini images will help scientists determine the composition of different parts of Saturn's ring system.

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 Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, 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.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Here's a couple more.

This image posted July 9, 2004 shows (L to R) the outer portion of the C ring and inner portion of the B ring around Saturn. The images taken during the Cassini spacecraft's orbital insertion on June 30 and show definite compositional variation within the rings. The B ring begins a little more than halfway across the image. The general pattern is from 'dirty' particles indicated by red to cleaner ice particles shown in turquoise in the outer parts of the rings. The ring system begins from the inside out with the D, C, B and A rings followed by the F, G and E rings. This image was taken with the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument, which is capable of resolving the rings to show features up to 97 kilometers (60 miles) across, roughly 100 times the resolution of ultraviolet data obtained by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. The $3 billion Cassini mission, a joint project of NASA (news - web sites), and the European and Italian space agencies, is hailed as a model of international cooperation, with scientists from 17 countries participating. EDITORIAL USE ONLY REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech

An ultraviolet image released by NASA (news - web sites) and the University of Colorado July 7, 2004 from the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn shows, from the inside out, the 'Cassini division' in faint red at (L) is followed by the A ring in its entirety. The A ring begins with a 'dirty' interior of red followed by a general pattern of more turquoise as it spreads away from the planet, indicating a denser material made up of ice. The red band roughly three-fourths of the way outward in the A ring is known as the Encke gap.The image was made by a $12.5 million Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph,or UVIS, that was built in Boulder, Colorado. EDITORIAL USE ONLY REUTERS/University of Colorado, LASP/NASA/Handout

A month old shot or so..

When the EU-US Cassini-Huygens probe passes through Saturn's rings Thursday it will become the first man-made object to orbit the planet, which it will do for four years as it studies Saturn's surface, rings and seven of its 31 moons, including the largest Titan(AFP/NASA (news - web sites)/File)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.