Animated Cassini image of Saturn and its rings. The rings are silhouetted against the partially sunlit planet. This view looks toward the shaded side of the rings from about 7 degrees below the ring plane. Saturn is a large gas giant planet, with a ring system that consists of thousands of chunks of rock and ice. This view, from a distance of around one million kilometres, was taken in green light. The image was obtained on 18 January 2017, with the wide-angle camera of Cassini's Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS). The Cassini spacecraft was launched in 1997 and surveyed the Saturnian system from 2004 until it was crashed into Saturn in September 2017. |