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02 DEC. 2004
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This image from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft was taken on 27 October 2004 as it pierced Saturn's ring plane and rounded the planet, capturing this view of the dark portion of the rings.
A portion of the planet's atmosphere is visible here, as is its shadow on the surface of the rings.
The image was taken with the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft wide-angle camera, at a distance of about 618 000 kilometres from Saturn, through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centred at 1001 nanometres. The image scale is 33 kilometres per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a co-operative project of NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency.
Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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