Approaching the Equinox

Caption NASA:"The shadow of the moon Mimas has just slipped off Saturn's Rings and onto the Planet in this Cassini Spacecraft image. The shadow is visible as a short dash below the Rings' shadows on the Planet. At this exposure setting, the Rings are too dim to be seen easily. As Saturn approaches its August 2009 equinox, the Planet's moons cast shadows onto the Rings.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the Rings from about 61° above the Ring-Plane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this Natural Color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini Spacecraft wide-angle camera on April 30, 2009 at a distance of approx. 1,4 MKM (about 870.000 miles) from Saturn.
Image scale is roughly 80 Km (about 50 miles) per pixel".