The moon Enceladus (out of view in this image) casts its shadow onto Saturn's cloud tops.

POSTCARD: Saturn rings the changes

3 July 2008

The ringed planet sits in repose in this image, the centre of its own microcosm of many rings and moons and one artificial satellite, a spacecraft named Cassini. Mimas (397 kilometres wide) is visible at upper left. Although unseen in this view, Enceladus (504 kilometres wide) casts its shadow upon the planet. The rings also cast their shadow, blocking the Sun's light from the low latitudes of the planet's northern hemisphere.

During Cassini's extended mission, dubbed the Cassini Equinox Mission, which begins on July 1, 2008, the ring shadows will slip past the planet's equator and into the southern hemisphere as Saturn passes through its northern vernal equinox on August 11, 2009, and the Sun appears to move northward through the ring plane.

This view looks down on the unilluminated side of the rings from about 22 degrees above (north of) the ring plane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural-colour view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on December 16, 2007, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometres from Saturn, giving an image scale of 86 kilometres per pixel.

Adapted from information issued by NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute.