Looking at the Giant

Saturn sits nested in its rings of ice as Cassini once again plunges toward the graceful giant. This natural color mosaic was acquired by the Cassini spacecraft as it soared 39° above the unilluminated side of the Rings.
Little light makes its way through the Rings to be scattered in Cassini's direction in this viewing geometry, making the Rings appear somewhat dark compared to the reflective Planet. The view can be contrasted with earlier mosaics designed to showcase the Rings rather than the Planet, which were therefore given longer exposure times.
Bright clouds play in the blue-gray skies of the North. The Ring shadows continue to caress the Planet as they slide farther South toward their momentary disappearance during Equinox in 2009.
The Rings' reflected light illuminates the Southern Hemisphere on Saturn's night side.
The scene is reminiscent of the parting glance of NASA's Voyager 1 as it said goodbye to Saturn in 1981 (see PIA00335). Cassini, however, will continue to orbit Saturn for many years to come.

Three of Saturn's moons are visible in this image: Mimas (about 397 Km across) at the 2 o'clock position, Janus (about 181 Km across) at the 4 o'clock position and Pandora (about 84 Km across) at the 8 o'clock position. Pandora is a faint speck just outside the narrow F-Ring.
This mosaic was constructed from wide-angle camera images taken just before the narrow-angle camera mosaic PIA08389.
The view combines 45 images -- 15 separate sets of red, green and blue images -- taken over the course of about two hours, as Cassini scanned across the entire Main Ring System.
The images in this view were obtained on May 9, 2007, at a distance of approx. 1,1 MKM (about 700.000 miles) from Saturn.
Image scale is about 62 Km (approx. 39 miles) per pixel.