Inside-Out Rings: Over the Limb

Cassini obtained the images in this mosaic on May 28, 2017, looking over the horizon just after its sixth pass through the gap between Saturn and its rings as part of the mission's Grand Finale.

In this view, Saturn looms in the foreground on the left, adorned by ring shadows. To the right, the rings emerge from behind the planet's hazy limb, stretching outward from Cassini’s perspective. The view is of the rings' unilluminated face, where sunlight filters through from the other side. The part of the planet seen here is in the southern hemisphere.

A wider, uncropped version of the mosaic (Fig. B), which shows more of the rings, is also available.

For another mosaic showing the view from between Saturn and the rings, see Inside-Out Rings: View From Beneath. A previously released movie sequence showed Cassini's changing view, gazing out upon the rings as the spacecraft passed through the ring plane from north to south (see Cassini's 'Inside-Out' Rings Movie).

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 Caltech in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and https://www.nasa.gov/cassini. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at https://ciclops.org.