Explanation: Saturn is bright in Earth's night skies. Telescopic views of the outer gas giant planet and its beautiful rings often make it a star at star parties. But this stunning view of Saturn's rings and night side just isn't possible from telescopes in the vicinity of planet Earth. Peering out from the inner Solar System they can only bring Saturn's day side into view. In fact, this image of Saturn's slender sunlit crescent with night's shadow cast across its broad and complex ring system was captured by the Cassini spacecraft. A robot spacecraft from planet Earth, Cassini called Saturn orbit home for 13 years before it was directed to dive into the atmosphere of the gas giant on September 15, 2017. This magnificent mosaic is composed of frames recorded by Cassini's wide-angle camera only two days before its grand final plunge. Saturn's night will not be seen again until another spaceship from Earth calls.
When I and my brother were little, we were allowed to put plastic stickers on our bedroom window for Christmas. Most of the stickers were Santas and elves and reindeer and Christmas trees and stuff, but there were also stars, crescent Moons and a Saturn. The Saturn sticker was all white, looking something like this on our window against the dark December night outside:
Of course, our sticker didn't even have the dark lines separating Saturn's disk from its rings. It was all white. I was absolutely floored when I first saw Saturn through a telescope and it looked just like that!!!!
Today's telescopes, and, in particular, the Cassini probe, have sure revolutionized our knowledge about Saturn! My favorite Saturn image is this one, "Figure 2". Read the NASA caption below!
On July 19, 2013, in an event celebrated the world over, NASA's Cassini spacecraft slipped into Saturn's shadow and turned to image the planet, seven of its moons, its inner rings -- and, in the background, our home planet, Earth.
With both Cassini's wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras aimed at Saturn, Cassini was able to capture 323 images in just over four hours. This final mosaic uses 141 of those wide-angle images. Images taken using the red, green and blue spectral filters of the wide-angle camera were combined and mosaicked together to create this natural-color view. A brightened version with contrast and color enhanced (Figure 1), a version with just the planets annotated (Figure 2), and an annotated version (Figure 3) are shown above.
For ease of visibility, Earth, Venus, Mars, Enceladus, Epimetheus and Pandora were all brightened by a factor of eight and a half relative to Saturn.
But that was July 19, 2013. Another backlit image is from September 15, 2017, and it was the swan song from Cassini.
I think there is a problem with the alignment here -
look at that sharp magenta line along the limb of Saturn!
There is a corresponding green line on the other side of Saturn.
Saturn images don't look real, they look surreal!
(and upon seeing it for the first time, I too was floored and thought "Holy cow, this thing really is for real!!")
Saturn at Night
