This image is simply too beautiful not to run for the weekend, even though it’s getting play everywhere. The Sun is, of course, behind Saturn, backlighting the rings to reveal hitherto unseen detail.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Gorgeous as it is, bear in mind that this is a composite in which the colors have been exaggerated. 165 Cassini images went into its production, taken with the spacecraft’s wide-angle camera over a three hour stretch on September 15. Ultraviolet, infrared and clear filter images went into the composite, which was then adjusted to get as close to natural color as possible. Much good science is coming out of these observations, but for now absorb the beauty of the scene, surely a view that will stand as one of Cassini’s defining moments.
Composite or not, this shot is one of the most beautiful actual images that I’ve seen in recent years. It is so nice that I actually largely ignored it for the first couple of days that it was being circulated, thinking that it was just another artistic rendering!
Agreed. I keep coming back to it and just shaking my head at the enchantment of the scene.
Cassini was the first astronomer to skein the true nature of the rings wasn’t he? Or was it Huygens? It’s an amazing view – imagine the young minds that’d be stirred if it was a big poster in a school classroom. What a time we are in! I just hope we survive it.
Also, that little dot, just to the left of the main rings, that’s Earth.