PIA09793: Sliding Shadows


Sliding Shadows

Caption:

Dark ring shadows adorn the northern hemisphere of Saturn. The shadows have loosened their grip on the north compared to when Cassini arrived in 2004 (see PIA06177 ), and presently continue to slide farther south.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 5 degrees above the ringplane.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The view was acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Oct. 22, 2007, at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (839,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 77 kilometers (48 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 Saturn
System Saturn
Target Type Ring Planet
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Wide Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Color, Shadow, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2007-12-14
Date in Caption 2007-10-22
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09793
Identifier PIA09793