NASA has released a new photo of Saturn and its rings taken by the Cassini spacecraft in which, the Earth, moon, Venus and Mars are all visible in the background, according to a press release.
Cassini's photos of Saturn have been highly anticipated, as they are of a pristine resolution and are backlit by the sun, creating a silhouette for the giant planet and its rings. The newest image was unveiled in the Newseum in Washington Tuesday and it displays the planet in natural-color, in other words, how a human would see it.
NASA's Cassini imaging team created the panoramic photo by putting together 141 wide-angled images. The photo spans 404,880 miles, capturing Saturn and all of its rings out to the E ring, the planet's second most outer ring. The distance from Saturn to its E ring is easily farther than the moon is from Earth.
"In this one magnificent view, Cassini has delivered to us a universe of marvels," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini's imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "And it did so on a day people all over the world, in unison, smiled in celebration at the sheer joy of being alive on a pale blue dot."
As Cassini swung around behind Saturn and took the backlit photo in June, NASA encouraged everyone on Earth to wave toward Saturn. The space agency gave specific times and directions in the sky for people to wave that corresponded with when Cassini would begin its photo session.
In the newest photo, not only is Earth and the moon visible in a tiny blue dot, but so are Mars and Venus. In the photo, the Earth and moon and a tiny blue dot below and to the right of Saturn and Mars and Venus sit above and to the left of the planet.
"This mosaic provides a remarkable amount of high-quality data on Saturn's diffuse rings, revealing all sorts of intriguing structures we are currently trying to understand," said Matt Hedman, a Cassini participating scientist at the University of Idaho in Moscow. "The E ring in particular shows patterns that likely reflect disturbances from such diverse sources as sunlight and Enceladus' gravity."
This was a special opportunity for Cassini to photograph Saturn and also capture Earth in the background because of the placement of the sun. If it had too much exposure, Cassini's sensitive imaging equipment would have been damaged, but with Saturn blocking most of it, the Earth was just visible.
"With a long, intricate dance around the Saturn system, Cassini aims to study the Saturn system from as many angles as possible," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Beyond showing us the beauty of the Ringed Planet, data like these also improve our understanding of the history of the faint rings around Saturn and the way disks around planets form - clues to how our own solar system formed around the sun."
