Saturn by Cassini

By Miss Cellania in Pictures, Science & Tech on Apr 21, 2009 at 12:16 pm

The Big Picture Blog from the Boston Globe has pictures from NASA sent back by the Cassini spacecraft as it passed Saturn and its moons. Cassini has been functioning in space for almost five years now, and the pictures are awesome!

Cassini looks toward Rhea’s cratered, icy landscape with the dark line of Saturn’s ringplane and the planet’s murky atmosphere as a background. Rhea is Saturn’s second-largest moon, at 1,528 km (949 mi) across. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired on July 17, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.2 million km (770,000 mi) from Rhea.

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(image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI)

See also: Saturn’s Newest Moon