Translucent Arcs of Saturn’s Rings

Saturn's Rings. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Saturn’s rings are perhaps the most recognized feature of any world in our solar system. Cassini spent more than a decade examining them more closely than any spacecraft before it. 

The rings are made mostly of particles of water ice that range in size from smaller than a grain of sand to as large as mountains. The ring system extends up to 282,000 kilometres from the planet, but for all their immense width, the rings are razor-thin, about 10 meters thick in most places. 

From the right angle you can see straight through the rings, as in this natural-colour view that looks from south to north. Cassini obtained the images that comprise this mosaic on April 25, 2007, at a distance of approximately 725,000 kilometres from Saturn. The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on Sept. 15, 2017. 

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (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. The Cassini orbiter and its two on-board cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations centre is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. 

Source: NASA