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Subtle Kinks

Jan. 14, 2008
The bright, perturbed core of Saturn's F ring displays several kink-like features. The core is flanked by dimmer, smoother ringlets. This image was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 2, 2007.

The bright, perturbed core of Saturn's F ring displays several kink-like features. The core is flanked by dimmer, smoother ringlets.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 12 degrees above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 2, 2007. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 575,000 kilometers (357,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-ring-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 92 degrees. Image scale is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

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