Seems like a while since any pretty images of the rings have come along, because Cassini has been squarely in the ring plane for so long. This situation is to continue until July when the orbital inclination will begin increasing rapidly:



That chart is based on information predicted by the SPICE kernels. Zooming in on July shows the first step in this maneuver:



It begins at about midnight July 22. Sure enough, that's when Cassini flies over the north pole of Titan, using the gravity assist to send it southward out of the ring plane:



Shortly thereafter, Cassini will begin returning perspectives like this:



A long dry spell for rings fans!

Well, we knew that this inclination change was coming. I'm looking forward to it -- the views of the rings ought to be just spectacular!

-the other Doug

What are those five little dots in the darkness of Titan's north pole?

Thery're the predicted locations of the five radar beams at that moment.

My secret base.

You must have your memory erased now.

Please log on to amnesiabrainwipe.com for your treatment.

It gets even better (if you like the rings, worse if you prefer to look at the satellites) by the end of the mission we end up near 67 deg. in inclination (or was it 76 deg.; dyslexia moment...)

Interesting. What are they looking for and why so narrow?

They aren't looking for anything in particular. It's part of mapping Titan's surface by synthetic aperture radar.
Those are I believe only centers of the 5 beams, not the entire radar footprint.

Plus they're looking up there primarily because the orbit change dictates that they fly over the pole. The footprint at that range wouldn't be much bigger than the area spanned by the five beam centers though.

dvandorn: "the views of the rings ought to be just spectacular!"

Here's another view Cassini will be getting in Feb. 2007:


thumbnail:


The full size version shows a couple of the shepherd-type moons will be in the frame.

The wide-angle camera isn't wide enough to show the whole system... pity. I guess that's where mosaics come in.

Amazing viewing angles ... Looking forward to that

This view will be great (click for larger version):



Here's a web page with a number of different predicted views for July2006-June2007:

Ring views