Saturn's C and B Rings From the Inside Out
Date: 09 July 2004
Satellite: Cassini
Depicts: Portion of C and B ring in ultraviolet
Copyright: NASA/JPL/University of Colorado
Images taken during the Cassini spacecraft's orbital insertion on 30 June 2004 show definite compositional variation within the rings.
This image shows, from left to right, the outer portion of the C ring and inner portion of the B ring. The B ring begins a little more than halfway across the image. The general pattern is from "dirty" particles indicated by red to cleaner ice particles shown in turquoise in the outer parts of the rings.
The ring system begins from the inside out with the D, C, B and A rings followed by the F, G and E rings.
This image was taken with the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument, which is capable of resolving the rings to show features up to 97 kilometres across, roughly 100 times the resolution of ultraviolet data obtained by the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
