Post-Equinox Colors (Natural Colors; credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

Caption NASA:"The Cassini Spacecraft captured this Natural Color View of Saturn almost a month after the Planet's August 2009 Equinox. The shadow cast on the Planet by the Rings remains narrow.
Spokes are visible on the B-Ring. To learn more about these ghostly radial structures, see PIA11144.

Mimas (approx. 396 Km, or about 246 miles across) can be seen in the lower left. Mimas and the Rings have been brightened relative to the Planet to increase visibility.

The novel illumination geometry that accompanies Equinox lowers the Sun's angle to the Ring-Plane, significantly darkens the Rings, and causes out-of-plane structures to look anomalously bright and cast shadows across the Rings. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn's Equinox, which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years.

Before and after Equinox, Cassini's cameras have spotted not only the predictable shadows of some of Saturn's moons (see PIA11657), but also the shadows of newly revealed vertical structures in the Rings themselves (see PIA11665).

This view looks toward the Northern, sunlit side of the Rings from about 10° above the Ring-Plane.

The red, green and blue images that were mosaicked together to create this view were obtained with the Cassini Spacecraft wide-angle camera on Sept. 4, 2009. The view was obtained at a distance of approx. 2,7 MKM (such as about 1,7 MMs) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-Spacecraft, or Phase, Angle of 92°.
Image scale is roughly 156 Km (about 97 miles) per pixel".