What's inside the Rings?

The 2 prominent dark gaps in Saturn's A-Ring contain small embedded moons and a host of other intriguing features. Here, 3 unique ringlets are visible in the Encke Gap (about 325 Km wide). The innermost ringlet (topmost here) is faint but continuous. The center ringlet brightens substantially toward upper left and displays a few slight kinks. This ringlet is coincident with the orbit of Pan (about 26 Km across). The outermost ringlet is discontinuous, with two bright regions visible.
The narrower Keeler Gap (about 42 Km wide) hosts the moon Daphnis (7 Km across - not visible in this image), which raises waves in the Gap edges as it orbits Saturn. At lower left, faint ringlets flanking the bright F-Ring core are visible. These features were found by the Cassini spacecraft to be arranged into a spiral arm structure that winds around the Planet like a spring. The spiral may be caused by tiny moonlets or clumps of material that have smashed through the F-Ring core and liberated material.
This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 23 degrees above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible red light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 11, 2006 at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (700,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 151 degrees. Image scale is about 6 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel.