Cut-Off Rings
Saturn's moon Mimas joins the planet's rings which appear truncated by the planet's shadow in this Cassini image.
Saturn is off to the left, out of view here. But the planet's shadow covers part of the rings across the middle of the image. Mimas (246 miles, 396 kilometers across) is closer to Cassini than the rings are here.
The bright speck above the rings is a star.
To increase visibility, the rings have been brightened by a factor of two relative to Mimas. This view looks toward the southern, unilluminated side of the rings from just below the ringplane.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 21, 2011. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.7 million miles (2.7 million kilometers) from Mimas. Image scale is 10 miles (16 kilometers) per pixel on Mimas.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
<< Previous Cassini