NASA Cassini Image: Intricate C Ring Details
Saturn’s inner C ring spreads across the field of view, showing the characteristic plateau and wave-like structure for which it is famed.
The center of this image shows an area approximately 75,000 kilometers (46,600 miles) from Saturn. The dark gap through the middle of the frame is the Colombo gap which houses the bright, narrow, eccentric Colombo ringlet, in resonance with the moon Titan.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Oct. 29, 2004, at a distance of about 842,000 (523,000 miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 4.7 kilometers (2.9 miles) per pixel.
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 Cassini-Huygens 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 team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org .
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
