The surface of Saturn’s moon Dione is rendered in crisp detail against a hazy, ghostly Titan. Visible in this image are hints of atmospheric banding around Titan’s north pole. The image was taken in visible blue light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 10, 2010.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Dione and 2.7 million kilometers (1.7 million miles) from Titan. Scale in the original image was 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Dione and 16 kilometers (10 miles) on Titan. The image has been magnified by a factor of 1.5 and contrast-enhanced to aid visibility. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This silhouette of Saturn was taken by the Cassini spacecraft on Feb. 13, 2010. Although the sun is eclipsed by Saturn in this dramatic image, some sunlight scatters through the uppermost part of the atmosphere to reach Cassini’s cameras. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

 

Just when you thought every big thing in the Solar System had already been discovered, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has found an extraordinary new ring around Saturn.

October 7, 2009: NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered an enormous and previously unknown infrared ring around Saturn.

“This is one supersized ring,” says Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. “If you could see the ring in the night sky, it would span the width of two full Moons.”

The new belt lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system, with an orbit tilted 27 degrees from the main ring plane. The bulk of its material starts about six million kilometers (3.7 million miles) away from the planet and extends outward roughly another 12 million kilometers (7.4 million miles). It would take about one billion Earths stacked together to fill the voluminous ring. One of Saturn’s farthest moons, Phoebe, circles within the newfound ring, and is likely the source of its material.

Source: Nasa Science – click here for full article