Saturn from Cassini

Courtesy NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute.

This glorious new image of Saturn from NASA's Cassini spacecraft provides just a hint of what is to come. Cassini ventures closer and closer to the ringed planet each day as it heads for its July 1st rendezvous, meaning images in the coming weeks and months will exhibit ever more detail. The spacecraft's narrow-angle camera acquired this image on February 9th from a range of 69.4 million kilometers (43.1 million miles, or 0.46 astronomical unit). The resolution enables us to see features just 540 km across. The picture shows multicolored bands in the planet's atmosphere, the Cassini Division and Encke Gap in the rings, and the icy moon Enceladus to Saturn's upper left. To view a higher-resolution version of this image, visit NASA's Cassini/Huygens home page.

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