NASA Cassini Mission: A Journey in Images Through 2006
Click on image to enlarge
Saturn’s rings, beautiful and mysterious, are an optical illusion on a cosmic scale. Far from solid, they’re actually a blizzard of water-ice particles mixed with dust and rock fragments. The Cassini mission has already captured amazing views of this dynamic system.
Cassini Rings in the New Year
With giant Saturn hanging in the blackness, the Cassini spacecraft viewed the rings as never before, revealing previously unknown faint rings and even glimpsing our home world.
With giant Saturn hanging in the blackness, the Cassini spacecraft viewed the rings as never before, revealing previously unknown faint rings and even glimpsing our home world.
Graceful Lanes of Ice
A golden view of the outer B ring, the Cassini Division and the inner part of the A ring.
The dark Cassini Division, within Saturn’s rings, contains a great deal of structure, as seen in this color image.
The Rings and Moons Dance
The little moon Daphnis drifts through the Keeler gap at the center of its entourage of waves.
Never-before-seen details in Saturn’s F ring, including the perturbing effect of small moonlets orbiting in or close to the ring’s bright core.
The shepherd moon Prometheus pulls two long streamers out of the F ring.
Pan cruises the Encke gap with several faint ringlets.
Wispy fingers of bright, icy material reach tens of thousands of kilometers outward from Saturn’s moon Enceladus into the E ring.
Search for Spokes
A broad and ghostly spoke drifts past under the Cassini spacecraft’s gaze.
Nine days before it entered orbit, the Cassini spacecraft captured this exquisite natural color view of Saturn’s rings.
Ringscape in Color
False color image of two density waves in Saturn’s A ring.
The best view of Saturn’s rings in the ultraviolet, hinting at the origins of the rings and their evolution.
Face of Beauty
Softly hued Saturn embraced by the shadows of its stately rings.
Multiple eyes of Cassini provide complementary information about the structure of Saturn’s rings.
The largest, most detailed, global natural color view of Saturn and its rings ever made.
