I just love this high contrast image from Cassini. It seems that every second image released from cassini is just so stunning. This shows a stunning contrast between dark and light of Saturn, its rings and its moons Dione and Enceladus.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Details on the image from Nasa regarding this image “Saturn’s northern and southern latitudes appear dark in this image because of the camera filter used. This view uses a spectral filter sensitive to absorption of certain wavelengths of light by methane in Saturn’s atmosphere. The cloud tops in the northern and southern latitudes are at a slightly greater depth than in the equatorial region, and are underneath a layer of methane. This means that light travels along a longer path compared to the equatorial region as it enters the atmosphere, reflects off the cloud tops, and returns through the upper atmosphere to enter the camera. The light at near-infrared wavelengths thus passes through more light-absorbing methane at the northern and southern latitudes than at the equator, and so these latitudes are darker.”

You can see Dione (1,123 kilometers across) on the left of the image while Enceladus (504 kilometersacross) is visible on the right. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 2.5 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Saturn with an image scale is 143 kilometers (89 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.”