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Saturn's Rings, Cold and Colder  The varying temperatures of Saturn's rings are depicted here in this false-color image from the Cassini spacecraft. Saturn on October 1997  Saturn is about 75, 000 miles (120, 000 km) across, and is flattened at the poles because of its very rapid rotation. A day is only 10 hours long on Saturn. Strong winds account for the horizontal bands in the atmosphere of this giant gas planet.<BR><BR>The delicate color variations in the clouds are due to smog in the upper atmosphere, produced when ultraviolet radiation from the Sun shines on methane gas. Deeper in the atmosphere, the visible clouds and gases merge gradually into hotter and denser gases, with no solid surface for visiting spacecraft to land on. Hubble Provides Clear Images Of Saturn's Aurora  This is the first image of Saturns ultraviolet aurora taken by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope in October 1997, when Saturn was a distance of 810 million miles (1.3 billion kilometers) from Earth. The new instrument, used as a camera, provides more than ten times the sensitivity of previous Hubble instruments in the ultraviolet. STIS images reveal exquisite detail never before seen in the spectacular auroral curtains of light that encircle Saturns north and south poles and rise more than a thousand miles above the cloud tops.
Saturn's Rings   Detail of Saturn's Rings, Disk and Shadow   Saturn on October 1996  Saturn is about 75, 000 miles (120,000 km) across, and is flattened at the poles because of its very rapid rotation. A day is only 10 hours long on Saturn. Strong winds account for the horizontal bands in the atmosphere of this giant gas planet. The delicate color variations in the clouds are due to smog in the upper atmosphere, produced when ultraviolet radiation from the Sun shines on methane gas. Deeper in the atmosphere, the visible clouds and gases merge gradually into hotter and denser gases, with no solid surface for visiting spacecraft to land on.
Saturn  The delicate color variations in the clouds are due to smog in the upper atmosphere, produced when ultraviolet radiation from the Sun shines on methane gas. Deeper in the atmosphere, the visible clouds and gases merge gradually into hotter and denser gases, with no solid surface for visiting spacecraft to land on. Edge-On View of Saturn's Rings  This photograph shows Saturn with its rings slightly tilted. The moon called Dione, on the lower right, is casting a long, thin shadow across the whole ring system due to the setting Sun on the ring plane. The moon on the upper left of Saturn is Tethys. Hubble's Latest Saturn Picture Precedes Cassini's Arrival  As NASA's Cassini spacecraft hurtles toward a July 1, 2004 rendezvous with Saturn, the Hubble Space Telescope continues snapping breathtaking pictures of the solar system's most photogenic planet. This latest view, taken on March 22, 2004, is so sharp that many individual ringlets can be seen in Saturn's ring plane.<BR><BR>Though Hubble is nearly a billion miles farther from Saturn than the Cassini probe, Hubble's exquisite optics, coupled with the high resolution of its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), allow it to take pictures of Saturn which are nearly as sharp as Cassini's wide-angle views of the full planet as it begins its approach. Of course, Cassini will ultimately far exceed the resolution of Hubble during its close encounter with Saturn; indeed, Cassini's sharpness began to surpass Hubble's when it approached to within 14 million miles (23 million km) of Saturn this month.
Phoebe  During its historic close encounter with Phoebe, the Cassini spacecraft captured a series of high resolution images of the small moon, six of which have been put together to create this mosaic.<BR><BR>Phoebe shows an unusual variation in brightness over its surface due to the existence on some crater slopes and floors of bright material -- thought to contain ice -- on what is otherwise one of the darkest known bodies in the solar system. Bright streaks on the rim of the large crater in the North (up in this image) may have been revealed by the collapse of overlying darker material from the crater wall. The large crater below right-of-center shows evidence of layered deposits of alternating bright and dark material. Looming Saturn  A cold, dusky Saturn looms in the distance in this striking, natural color view of the ringed planet and five of its icy satellites. This image was composed from exposures taken by Cassini's narrow angle camera on Nov. 9, 2003, from a distance of 111.4 million kilometers (69.2 million miles). That is about three-fourths the distance of Earth from the Sun and 235 days from reaching Saturn. The smallest features visible here are about 668 kilometers (415 miles) across - a marked improvement over the last Cassini Saturn image released on Nov. 1, 2002. New features such as intricate cloud patterns and small moons near the rings should become visible over the next several months as the spacecraft speeds toward its destination.<BR><BR>Some details within Saturn's massive ring system are already visible. Structure is evident in the B ring, the middle and brightest of Saturn's three main rings. The 4,800 kilometer (2,980 mile)-wide Cassini Division is the distinctive dark, central band that separates the outermost A ring from the brighter B ring. Interestingly, the outer edge of the B ring is maintained by a strong gravitational resonance with the moon Mimas, also visible in this image. The 325-kilometer (200 -mile) wide Encke gap in the A ring, near the outer edge of the ring system, is also visible, as is the fainter C ring, interior to the B ring.<BR><BR>Saturn's multi-banded, multi-hued atmosphere is also apparent at this distance. In the southern polar region, a dusky haze is visible, grayer than the light-brown at middle latitudes. Most of Saturn's northern hemisphere is in shadow of the rings, with the exception of a small sliver visible on the limb. Five Saturnian satellites can also be seen in this image. The brightness of these bodies has been increased three- to five-fold to enhance visibility. The satellites are, on the left, from brightest to faintest, Rhea, Dione, and Enceladus, and on the right, from brightest to faintest, Tethys and Mimas. A Change of Seasons on Saturn  Looming like a giant flying saucer in our outer solar system, Saturn puts on a show as the planet and its magnificent ring system nod majestically over the course of its 29-year journey around the Sun.
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