Spokes Comin’ Atcha

As Cassini sped around Saturn, the spacecraft turned to snap this image of bright spokes giving chase around the B ring.

These radial markings are appearing more often as Saturn approaches equinox in August 2009 (see 'Tis the Season for Spokes).

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 31 degrees below the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 2, 2009. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 578,000 kilometers (359,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 144 degrees. Image scale is 30 kilometers (20 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