PIA06624: Saturn's Smile


Saturn’s Smile

Caption:

The ringed planet wears a broad grin in this image from Cassini, as the icy rings cast long, sweeping shadows across the northern hemisphere. Fantastic details are visible in the bright and dark of the gas giant's many cloud bands, and the thin rings slice the scene in two.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 27, 2005, at a distance of approximately 2.7 million kilometers (1.7 million miles) from Saturn through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 727 nanometers, where gaseous methane absorbs. The image scale is 156 kilometers (97 miles) per pixel.

Background Info:

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 mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, 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 .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Saturn
System Saturn
Target Type Planet
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Wide Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Grayscale, Infrared, Methane, Shadow, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2005-04-11
Date in Caption 2005-02-27
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06624
Identifier PIA06624