PIA09763: B Ring Terminus


B Ring Terminus

Caption:

The brilliant B ring ends abruptly at the Huygens Gap -- the broad, dark band devoid of ring material seen here near left. This gap marks the inner edge of the Cassini Division, within which the five dim bands at left reside.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 6 degrees below the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 29, 2007. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1 million kilometers (637,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 6 kilometers (4 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 operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Saturn Rings B Ring, Cassini Division, Saturn
System Saturn
Target Type Ring Gap, Planet
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter Huygens Probe
Host Type Orbiter Lander, Probe
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Grayscale, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2007-11-02
Date in Caption
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09763
Identifier PIA09763