Hello, I’m new here. This may not be a productive question, but it’s been nagging me for a while.

After a life of ignorance and doubt, I have re-embraced my love for all things space-related recently. I started by looking at Cassini images. I came across this image, which looks great, but then I remembered that Saturn’s rings are only one kilometer thick. The thought occurred to me: if the rings are that thin, how in the universe are they visible from this far away? I don’t remember the distance, but it’s millions of kilometers away, so I would think they wouldn’t be visible from that distance, unless you’re seeing them at an angle.

I’m sure this is a simple answer, but I’m not knowledgeable enough. Thanks for allowing me to join the forum, and thanks for taking my question.

It is indeed viewed at an angle. You can see this when the ring goes behind the planet.

Oh okay. I totally didn’t see that. Thanks for pointing that out! I can finally rest easy. 😄 It can now go back to being one of my favorite Cassini images.

Additionally, a feature does not have to appear >1 pixel (in this case, in width) to be visible. Stars are visible in, say, HST photos, but are much smaller than 1 pixel, but are very bright. An object that resolves to <1 pixel will still have an effect on the brightness of pixels and so can stand out from the background as a visible feature if the contrast is great enough.

See also http://satobs.org/tss.html -- a 2.54mm-wide (but rather long) string apparently easily visible from hundreds of km away.
(The angle of which is a couple of orders of magnitude smaller than notionally 1km-wide rings would be seen edge-on at the distance of the above picture, 3.2 million km.)