Cassini's Imaging Science Subsystem captured this stunning view of Saturn on April 13, 2007.

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Isn't it great to have a spacecraft orbiting Saturn? Yesterday the Cassini orbiter's imaging team released another group of photos that show off the majesty of the Ringed Planet. This view is just one of the images now available for the public to ogle. What you're seeing here is the shadowed night side of Saturn's semitransparent rings, tilted toward Cassini's camera by about 18° from edge-on. On Saturn itself, the upper, curved dark bands are the rings' shadow.

This view was captured on April 13th at about 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Saturn. Each pixel is 108 kilometers wide.

Take a closer look. At the top of the image, you can faintly make out the 84-kilometer-wide moon Pandora. The Cassini team's image processors have bumped up the moon's brightness by a factor of three so we can see it easier. Still, it will be a challenge on most monitors. To help your search, download a full-resolution version of this image from NASA's Planetary Photojournal.

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