Sun-striped Saturn
This dramatic portrait of long thin shadows of Saturn's rings across the planet's northern latitudes was taken by the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft.
Within the shadows, cast by the Sun, bright bands represent areas where the ring material is less dense, while dark strips and wave patterns reveal areas of denser material.
The shadow darkens sharply near upper right, corresponding to the boundary of the thin C ring with the denser B ring.
Saturn's moon Mimas (398 kilometres across) has wandered into view near the bottom of the image. A few of the large craters on this small moon are visible.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on 18 January 2005, at a distance of 1.4 million kilometres from Saturn.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a co-operative project of NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
