Spellbinding Saturn

As enchanting as it is scientifically intriguing, Saturn is a world of unparalleled beauty and limitless potential for learning.

Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across, at right) and Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across, at left) float across the field of view as bright clouds roll through the gas giant's skies. The rings cast dark shadows onto the planet's mid-northern latitudes.

This view looks toward Saturn from edge-on with the ringplane.

The image was taken using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light. The view was obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 8, 2007 at a distance of approximately 2.9 million kilometers (1.8 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 168 kilometers (104 miles) per pixel.

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