Over the Top

• Click the image above for a larger view
• Full-Res JPEG (1019 x 1021) (49.0 kB)
• Full-Res TIFF (1019 x 1021) (3.1 MB)

Caption:

Saturn dominates this colorful view, taken from a vantage point high above the rings. From here the Cassini spacecraft can see the rings' far side, where the dark shadow of Saturn abruptly terminates their visibility.

Mimas (397 kilometers, or 247 miles across) casts its shadow onto the planet's northern latitudes below center.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 27 degrees above the ringplane.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 26, 2008 at a distance of approximately 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 93 kilometers (58 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/ . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Cataloging Keywords: