The unlit side of the rings Options

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Cassini has previously imaged the unlit side of the rings but now it is doing extensive observations of the unlit side. For the first time in its mission Cassini is spending a significant amount of time north of the ringplane - earlier it has done so only near periapsis but this orbit is different.

This is a quick RGB composite I did from wide angle images:



I made no attempts to correct the color - this is probably not very far from the true color of the rings. Large color variations are apparent, the C ring and the Cassini division appear much more bluish than the thicker rings (A and B ). It should be noted that these images were very probably downliked with the 12 -> 8 bit encoding which basically means that dark areas appear too bright in this image because I did not correct for this.

It's also interesting to compare this image to Voyager images:

Voyager 1: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02241

Voyager 2: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01955
Voyager 2: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01389

[alan]

Perhaps you're referring to the disuniformities visible as small hue variation is this RGB version (with enhanced saturation):
[attachment=6850:attachment] (start images N00064483/84/86)
Anyway, is something barely visible to me...

[color=#FF0000]EDIT: just posted a short movie showing spokes transit in this region during previous day, the rough texture noted by alan seems to co-rotate with spokes...

Yes, that's what I was referring to

[dilo]

Between the various images coming down now from unlit side, this partially shaded C-ring view is particularly intriguing, with many stars in the background...
What seems odd to me is the long streak on the right of the center (inside the Saturn shadow)... Very similar to an artificial satellite pass in front a stella field, but we are on Saturn so the most probable explaination must be a cosmic ray. A rare one, because a so long track imply strictly radent trajectory and "slow" energy release on the sensor... (we see other CR tracks in this image, but they are shorter as usual).
Note also the Saturn night side barely visible in the very bottom edge...

[Rob Pinnegar]

Between the various images coming down now from unlit side, this partially shaded C-ring view is particularly intriguing, with many stars in the background...

Actually, unless I'm very wrong, that's the inner part of the D Ring, not the C Ring. It is a very nice image.