Titan (5150 kilometers, 3200 miles across) is Saturn’s largest moon  but is not pictured here. What you can see is its elongated shadow below  Saturn’s rings in this newly released image from Cassini. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn with an image scale of 123 kilometers (76 miles) per pixel.

Titan Casts a fuzzy shadow.

Titan’s orbit is almost exactly in the same plane as the rings, and having its shadow  so far south of the rings’ shadow is an indication that the Sun is shining down on the planet from just north of the equator. Because the rings are closer to the planet you can just barely see that the shadow they cast is just south of the equator. Titan’s orbit around Saturn is about 1.2 million km from the planet, about 10 times farther out than the main rings.

The images alone have been worth sending this Mission!

For more information about the Cassini Equinox Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute