PIA09800: Bright Strands


Bright Strands

Caption:

A section of Saturn's perturbed F ring displays kinks in its bright strands. At left, edge waves in the Encke Gap, caused by the presence of Pan, can be seen, along with two faint ringlets.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 4 degrees above the ringplane.

The rings disappear into the planet's shadow at the top of the scene.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 14, 2007. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.7 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-ring-spacecraft, or phase, angle of about 55 degrees. Image scale is 10 kilometers (6 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 Encke Gap, F Ring, Pan, Saturn
System Saturn
Target Type Ring Gap, Planet, Satellite
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Grayscale, Shadow, Visual, Wave
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2007-12-25
Date in Caption 2007-11-14
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09800
Identifier PIA09800