Natural Saturn On The Cassini Cruise

Explanation: What you could see approaching Saturn aboard an interplanetary cruise ship would closely resemble this subtly shaded view of the gorgeous ringed gas giant. Processed by the Hubble Heritage project , the picture intentionally avoids overemphasizing color contrasts and presents a natural looking Saturn with cloud bands, storms , nearly edge-on rings , and the small round shadow of the moon Enceladus near the center of the planet's disk. Of course, seats were not available on the only ship currently enroute - the Cassini spacecraft, launched just over a year ago and scheduled to arrive at Saturn in the year 2004. After an extended cruise to a world 1,400 million kilometers from the Sun , Cassini will tour the Saturnian system , conducting a remote, robotic exploration with software and instruments designed by denizens of planet Earth .