Nice distant shot of backlit Mimas: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawi...?imageID=225999

Here's a really spectacular composition. Lots of complicated geometry and lighting going on here! I can't wait to see this assembled in colour. http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...2/W00065213.jpg

The Dione flyby images are down, lots of faulting, and lots of non-circular craters too. example here
Beautiful.

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RGB color, clear filter luminance. Limitations of raw jpegs included.

Dione mosaic, 3 clear frames from around 78 000 km. North should be somewhere around 10 o'clock.
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Well, that was a short wait!

Just a personal thing, I like to have the ring plane below my feet rather than over my head so I prefer your version rotated to match the raws. A particularly nice touch in this extraordinary view is the way the shadow of the far side of the rings (though itself invisible on the far side of Saturn) makes a gap in the light refracting through the atmosphere.

Ahhh..... I was wondering what was causing that. Thanks!


Here's an fly-by type animation of the global images of Dione.

Dione half-illluminated, HiPass GRN L (GRN) RGB (IR3, GRN, VIO):

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Fracture pattern and crater at about mid-point on image above via narrow angle camera:
HiPass L (CL1 CL2) RGB (IR4, GRN, UV2):

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Telesto transiting in front of .... Tethys?
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...2/N00162316.jpg

In front of Rhea (according to Rev 137 Looking ahead page).

These must be some of the closest-to-edge-on views we've had of the rings. At first inspection I'm baffled by the interplay of light on dark and dark on light along the ring plane in some of these images. http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawi...?imageID=226549

You've got a short memory! At various times during the mission we've spent a long time flying within the ring plane, getting VERY edge on views. I did a quick search at the Imaging Node on Cassini WAC images targeted at Saturn where the sub-spacecraft latitude was between 0.1 and -0.1 degrees and found 880 images, like the attached, which is from February of 2005. If the Imaging Node Atlas isn't your thing, search February 2005 at the raw images website, and you'll find ones like this.

And that ladies and gentlemen, is how Saturn looks from its (regular) moons...

Please, for the sake of my sanity, tell your friends...

it looks like this from Enceladus at the current time and date ( well 5 min ago )
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Saturn DOES NOT look like this from any of it's moons
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...tell your friends... laugh.gif
--- edit ---
-- oops Iapetus dose--

*cough*Iapetus*cough*

Yeah, I've had the book with the Chesley Bonestell paintings in for the last 40 years or so . . .

I must confess I only started taking a closer interest in the rings and ring images following the equinox observations showing all that spectacular vertical structure. Since then I've wanted to know how those features would look edge on whilst also illuminated at low angles. I didn't catch any shots taken very close to ring plane crossings during the eqinox period, but maybe Emily or someone else with search expertise (or just a good memory) will be able to point to some such?

I thought that is what Emily did just 5 posts up?

That was a very edge on view (nice) but not edge on illumination. It's the two things together I'm looking for.

Nigel, try going to http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/search/search.html, select Cassini under Mission, select ISS under Instrument, select Saturn under Target Name. Since you're interested in edge-on illumination, limit Image Mid Time by whatever span of dates around the August 11 equinox you're interested in (like for instance 2009-07-11 to 2009-09-11). If you want to be near the ring plane then click on the Geometry tab and scroll down until you get to Sub Spacecraft Latitude and enter some small range. Then scroll back up and click Get Count or Get Results under Product Search. If you don't get results you like, try selecting Rings as the target instead, or allow a longer date span.

Thanks for that very explicit help Emily. I immediately thought "Even I can follow that!", so I tried it.

I didn't find any images from between plus and minus 1 deg latitude and within 6 months of equinox, but I'm very happy to have had a proper go at using the search system and I'm sure I'll return to it.

It isn't one of the "normal" moons. It doesn't count.

Whose shadow is this?
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawi...?imageID=227066
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawi...?imageID=227063

the second one is most likely Tethys
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