Ring shadows blanket the planet Saturn as it moon Dione swings past
silently in the black of space
Ring
shadows blanket the planet Saturn as
it moon Dione swings past silently in the black of space.
The Cassini orbiter snapped this view of Saturn
and Dione as it flew past the unlit side of the planet’s rings at angle of
about nine degrees above the ring plane.
The blue
and gold hues of Saturn shine through where ring shadows are absent, while the
rings themselves – glowing in what little light is available – whip around the
planet on the left side of this image.
Dione, with
a diameter of about 700 miles (1,126 kilometers) appears at top. Cassini used
its wide-angle camera to record this view on Feb. 4, 2007 while swinging past
Saturn at a distance of about 800,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers).
-- SPACE.com Staff
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science
Institute
Return each weekday for a new SPACE.com Image of the Day.
| 
