Saturn hangs in space silently as its rings and moons go about their orbital dance.

In this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn, the gas giant’s signature rings appear little more than a fine white line cutting across the horizontal. Saturn’s moon Dione (left) and icy Enceladus (right) are the only objects interrupting the ring plane.

From this angle, Saturn’s rings appear just tens of meters thick, paltry when compared with Dione’s 695-mile (1,118-kilometer) diameter and Enceladus’ 314-mile (505-kilometer) width.

Although Cassini snapped this image on Feb. 28, 2005, NASA officials released it this month.

Cassini used its wide-angle lens to observe Saturn from a distance of about 1.6 million miles (2.6 million kilometers) with a resolution of about 96 miles (154 kilometers) per pixel.

-- SPACE.com Staff

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute