The Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn has taken a stunning new image of the ringed planet. The new picture of Saturn shows the second-largest planet in the solar system half-lit by the distant sun. The photograph was recorded from 1.2 million miles away from the massive planet.
Saturn's northern hemisphere is currently approaching summer, during which time high latitudes are exposed to constant sunlight, much like what happens on Earth. This orientation can be seen in the angle of the terminator, where day meets night.
"This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 7 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 19, 2016 using a spectral filter that preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers. North on Saturn is up and rotated 20 degrees to the right," Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) officials report on their Web site.
Each pixel in the new black-and-white image represents roughly 68 miles from side to side.
The Cassini spacecraft was launched from Earth in October 1997, arriving at Saturn in 2004. This observatory is one of the largest, heaviest, most complex probes ever launched into space. Traveling with the orbiting observatory was the Huygens lander, which set down on the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, in January 2005.
"Cassini completed its initial four-year mission to explore the Saturn System in June 2008, and the first extension, called the Cassini Equinox Mission, in September 2010. Now, the healthy spacecraft is making exciting new discoveries in a second extension called the Cassini Solstice Mission," NASA reports on the Cassini mission page.
Recent research suggests the rings of Saturn came into being after dinosaurs began to roam the Earth.
During the last phase of its mission, engineers will direct the vehicle into a hazardous, yet potentially awarding, set of orbits known as the Grand Finale. The craft will begin its swan song with 20 daring passes just outside the narrow F ring surrounding Saturn. This will be followed by a last flyby of the massive moon Titan. Then, the vehicle will pass within the innermost ring of the gas giant 22 times, collecting a vast amount of data on the planet, completing the mission.
Cassini is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian space agency.
