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B Ring in the Negative

Nov. 26, 2008
Saturn's B ring is filled with radial structure. This image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft of the inner B ring was taken from the unlit side of the rings so the denser parts of the ring transmit less light and consequently appear darker here.

The B ring, shown here, is filled with radial structure. This image of the inner B ring was taken from the unlit side of the rings so the denser parts of the ring transmit less light and consequently appear darker here.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 21, 2008 at a distance of approximately 1.198 million kilometers (745,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 26 degrees. Image scale is 7 kilometers (4 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/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

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