The view is from 13 degrees below the equator. The narrow angle image taken May 16, when the spacecraft was 24.3 million kilometers (15.1 million miles) from Saturn, was made using a combination of red, green and blue filters. Even the magnificent rings, at nearly their maximum tilt toward Earth, show subtle hues, which suggest the trace chemical differences in their icy composition.Ĭassini has two cameras, a wide angle and a narrow angle. Like Jupiter, all bands are parallel to Saturn's equator. Saturn displays its familiar banded structure, and haze and clouds of various altitudes. The subtle pastel colors of ammonia-methane clouds trace a variety of atmospheric dynamics. 'This renders colors similar to what an astronaut would see if it were possible to watch Saturn through the Hubble Space Telescope,' he said. Karkoschka combined camera exposures in four filters (blue, blue-green, green, and red) into Hubble's new Saturn image. Cassini's images grew sharper than Hubble's when the spacecraft came to within 23 million kilometers (14 million miles) of Saturn earlier this month.

Cassini will ultimately far exceed the resolution of Hubble during its close encounter with Saturn. 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, even though Hubble is nearly a billion miles farther from Saturn than Cassini is. UA Professor Alfred McEwen is a member of the ISS team. Starting this week, the Cassini Imaging Team will be releasing more new views of the ringed planet on the Cassini Imaging Team website at, said ISS team leader Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute in Boulder. Cassini is still about 20 million kilometers (about 12.4 million miles) away and only 36 days from reaching Saturn.

When Cassini returned its picture of Saturn on May 16, it was so close to the planet that the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) narrow-angle camera could not fit the whole planet in its field-of-view. Electronic image files and additional information are online at. The picture is so sharp that many individual ringlets can be seen in the planet's ring plane. For the first time, astronomers can compare equally sharp views of Saturn from two very different perspectives.Įrich Karkoschka of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory took Hubble's latest view of Saturn on March 22, 2004. Cassini has a very different view of Saturn than Hubble's Earth-centered view. It was put together by amateur image processor and Cassini fan Gordan Ugarkovic.As the Cassini spacecraft hurtles toward a rendezvous with Saturn on June 30 (July 1, Universal Time), both Cassini and the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope snapped spectacular pictures of the planet and its magnificent rings.Ĭassini is approaching Saturn at an oblique angle to the sun and from below the ecliptic plane. This picture was made from images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2013. In the background you can also see Earth.Ī portrait looking down on Saturn and its rings. You can see seven of its moons and its inner rings. NASA's Cassini spacecraft went behind Saturn and took this picture in 2013. Voyager 1 took this picture as it passed by. This is a picture of Saturn and its moons Tethys and Dione. The Cassini spacecraft took this picture of Saturn's rings.

Four robotic spacecraft have visited Saturn, including Pioneer 11, Cassini, and Voyager 1 and 2.

Saturn has been known since ancient times because it can be seen without advanced telescopes.

That means Jupiter and Uranus are Saturn’s neighboring planets.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun.

Saturn has 145 moons that we know of so far.

One year on Saturn is the same as 29 Earth years.

One day on Saturn goes by in just 10.7 hours.

Saturn has a lovely set of seven main rings with spaces between them.

It is made mostly of hydrogen and helium.

Now we know those 'handles' turned out to be the rings of Saturn. At first he thought he was looking at three planets, or a planet with handles. When Galileo Galilei saw Saturn through a telescope in the 1600s, he wasn't sure what he was seeing. Credit: NASA Visualization Technology Applications and Development (VTAD)

Explore Saturn! Click and drag to rotate the planet.

Real photos of saturn through telescope