Carina Nebula, from Cassini

Cassini briefly turned its gaze from Saturn and His Rings and Moons to marvel at the Carina Nebula, a brilliant region 8.000 LY from our Solar System and more than 200 LY across. Nearly every point of light in this image is a star in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
The nebula is a region of gas and dust made to glow by the ultraviolet light bursting from bright, hot and extremely massive young stars within. Darker regions in the scene are not devoid of stars; rather, they are areas where dense clouds of dust block the light from background stars.

This image and others like it are taken by the spacecraft from time to time for calibration purposes. Calibration images rarely contain such incredible sights. This one affirms Cassini's position as the farthest, working astronomical observatory ever established around our sun - our "eyes on the cosmos", a billion miles from Earth.

The image was taken using the Cassini wide-angle camera on May 14, 2005. The view is a 68-second, clear-filter exposure.