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Saturn's Rings: the whole System (natural colors; credits: NASA)
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Caption NASA:"Details of Saturn's icy Rings are visible in this sweeping view from Cassini of the Planet's glorious Ring System.
This natural color mosaic, taken from 10° below the illuminated side of the Rings, shows, from left to right, radially outward from Saturn, the C-Ring (with its Colombo and Maxwell Gaps); the B-Ring and the Cassini Division beyond, with the intervening Huygens Gap; the A-Ring (with its Encke and Keeler Gaps); and, on the far right, the narrow F-Ring. The total span covers approx. 65.700 Km (such as about 40.800 miles).
Although it is too faint to be seen here, the D-Ring is located just to the left of the C-Ring.
It is interesting to compare this view with PIA08389, which shows the unilluminated side of the Rings. The difference in brightness of the B-Ring relative to the other Rings is striking. When illuminated directly by the Sun, the B-Ring appears brighter than the adjacent A and C-Rings; however, when viewing the unlit side of the B-Ring, the A and C-Rings appear brighter.
This phenomenon occurs because the density of the B-Ring is greater than that of the A or C-Rings.
The mosaic was constructed from 45 narrow-angle-camera images — 15 separate sets of red, green and blue images — taken over the course of about four hours, as Cassini scanned across the Rings. The images in this view were obtained by NASA's Cassini Spacecraft on Nov. 26, 2008, at a distance of approx. 1,1 MKM (such as about 700.000 miles) from Saturn and at a Phase Angle of 28°.
Image scale in the radial (horizontal) direction is about 7 Km (4,3 miles) per pixel".
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