PIA00534: Wide-Angle Image of Saturn's Rings


Wide-Angle Image of Saturn’s Rings

Caption:

This wide-angle image of Saturn's rings was taken Aug. 26 just before Voyager 2's crossing of the plane of these complex structures. The spacecraft was 103,000 kilometers (64,000 miles) from the rings when it acquired this image. This extremely oblique view of the bright side of the rings highly magnifies features near the bottom of the picture and compresses features across to the other side of the west ansa (the western edge of the loop in the rings). Starting from the bottom, one can see the F-ring, the A-ring with the Encke Gap, the Cassini Division (the narrow dark band at center), the B-ring and the C-ring. The high-contrast bright and dark areas of the C-ring are seen at right; then, continuing upward, come the B- and A-rings straddling the Cassini Division and a very foreshortened view of the A-ring. The bright streaks in the B-ring are the spokes in forward-scattered light.

Background Info:

The Voyager Project is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Saturn Rings A Ring, B Ring, Cassini Division, Encke Gap, F Ring
System Saturn
Target Type Ring Gap
Mission Voyager
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter Voyager 2
Host Type Orbiter Flyby Spacecraft
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Wide Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Disk, Grayscale, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 1997-05-24
Date in Caption
Image Credit NASA/JPL
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00534
Identifier PIA00534