If you ’re flurry by this mental image , we do n’t blame you . What you ’re seeing here are the gang of Saturn and the accelerator pedal heavyweight itself . But the planet ’s mob are , well , rings . Why do they appear to be criss - crossing each other here ?
The answer is a pretty awesome trick , rupture bythe Cassini spacecraft that ’s currently in orbit around Saturn . The bulk of the picture is the rings itself , while in the background is the satellite Saturn . The air go the other direction to the ring are actually the tincture of the rings on the major planet , visible because the rings are semi - pellucid .
That ’s not the only surprising affair about this image , though . Take a look just below the center , and you ’ll spot a break in one of the halo with a blank dot in it . This interruption is known as the Encke interruption , and the white pane is the moon Pan ( 28 kilometers/17 miles across ) . Moons like this form gaps by cleaning out junk from the halo .
Now you see it … NASA / JPL - Caltech / Space Science Institute
Cassini took this double from a distance of 1.9 million kilometer ( 1.2 million mile ) from Pan on February 11 , 2016 , with a ordered series of 10 km ( 6 miles ) per picture element . The spacecraft arrived in orbit around Saturn in 2004 , and since then it has provided us with incredible views and datum from Saturn and its various moons , including Enceladus and Titan .
But , sadly , all safe things mustcome to an remnant . On September 15 next year , the space vehicle will be sent to its dying in the atmosphere of Saturn . This is because , as it runs out of fuel , NASA wants to ensure it wo n’t accidentally hit one of the potentially life - harboring moons and contaminate it with fabric from Earth .
Do n’t despair too much , though , because this final death plunge will see Cassini revert some groundbreaking science to Earth . It ’ll be sending back data constantly until its final moments , so we ’ll get incredible data point from within Saturn ’s rings and from its upper atmosphere as well – something we ’ve never gotten before .
Until then , relish in the glory of images like these . With no other ballistic capsule to Saturn currently in the works , we really should n’t take Cassini for granted .
Here ’s the full figure of speech in all its aureole . NASA / JPL - Caltech / Space Science Institute
