Saturn’s Outer C Ring

This view takes in the outer third of Saturn's C ring -- from the Maxwell Gap, at center left, to the C-ring edge at lower right.

For reference, see the labeled mosaic of the rings presented in Expanse of Ice.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 4 degrees below the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 17, 2007. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 465,000 kilometers (289,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale at the center of this view is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel in the radial, or outward from Saturn, direction and 42 kilometers per pixel in the longitudinal, or around Saturn, direction.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, 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, D.C. 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, Colo.

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

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute