Petal Rotation and Magnetotail Petal

Date: 01 Jul 2004
Satellite: Cassini
Depicts: Third segment of Cassini's tour of Saturn
Copyright: NASA

Date:	7 September 2005 through 22 July 2006
Orbit:	14 - 26

Moving the spacecraft around in its orbit as viewed from Earth provides important science opportunities. It allows scientists to capture data in a wide swath of Saturn's magnetosphere. One unique region is the magnetotail. This is the region facing away from the Sun where the planet's magnetosphere is squeezed by the solar wind.

This plot gives the polar view (top) and edge-on view (bottom). In the polar view the inner dashed circle represents the orbit of Titan and the outer dashed circle represents the orbit of Iapetus. The scales on the axes are in Saturn radii.