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In 1818 Alexandre Henri Gabriel de Cassini (1781-1832), a French botanist hailing from a family of astronomers and cartographers, decided that the name by which our plant went also in Linnaeus - Othonna pectinata - was too confusing. Another plant was already called Othonna. So he devised the fitting new name 'Euryops' (= Wide-eyed) retaining the specific 'pectinatus'. Apparently that last word refers to the 'comblike' foliage (in learned English: pectinate).
It's a plant from southern Africa and was being grown in England by 1731 (The Botanical Magazine 1795: 306). In our Hortus it's in the South Africa glass house.
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Réalisé le 09 novembre 2015 au parc national Ankasa, Ghana, Afrique de l'ouest.
Cliquez sur la photo pour l'agrandir / click on the photograph to enlarge it.
Taken on November, 9th / 2015 at Ankasa National Park, Ghana, West Africa.
After more than 12 years studying Saturn, its rings and moons, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has entered the final year of its epic voyage. The conclusion of the historic scientific odyssey is planned for September 2017, but not before the spacecraft completes a daring two-part endgame.
Beginning on November 30, Cassini's orbit will send the spacecraft just past the outer edge of the main rings. These orbits, a series of 20, are called the F-ring orbits. During these weekly orbits, Cassini will approach to within 4,850 miles (7,800 kilometers) of the center of the narrow F ring, with its peculiar kinked and braided structure.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, click here.
Casino's Flycatcher, also known as Cassin's Grey Flycatcher or Cassin's Alseonax, is a species of bird in the family Muscicapidae. These birds are always associated with water and this pair were seen over a river in Ankasa Forest, Ghana, West Africa.
Thanks for your visit… Any comment you make on my photograph is greatly appreciated and encouraging! But please do not use this image without permission.
Processed using red, green, and blue filtered images taken by Cassini on August 31 2009. This is about 20 days following equinox, so the rings are facing the sun edge-on.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn was intended to explore the rings and moons of that great planet. Titan was a prime target. To the extent that Enceladus was considered, it was thought to be a boring ice coated planet. Which is why there were no instruments on board specifically focused on figuring out what exactly Enceladus was expelling from geysers on its surface thousands of feet into space, which we didn't know was happening until it was captured by Cassini. But NASA was able to shift trajectories and visit Enceladus many more times than originally intended, and repurpose some instruments to figure out that rather than a boring ball of solid ice, Enceladus has a subsurface ocean of water beneath 20 miles of ice. And that was the source of the geysers.
We need to send another mission to Saturn to find out more, because with all that water, Enceladus may be capable of hosting life.
Cassini ended its mission by plunging into Saturn. This was not how the spaceship was intended to end, but the decision was made to do so so that the spaceship would not accidentally hit Enceladus at some point in the future and contaminate it, thereby depriving us of the opportunity to discover if life has arisen elsewhere in our solar system.
On a personal note, I had to include something from Cassini because it's the one space mission my dad worked on. I didn't find out about that until my mom told me after he died.
Processed using calibrated red, green, and blue filtered images of Saturn taken by Cassini on October 13 2004. Moons, clockwise from bottom right, are Tethys, Rhea, and Enceladus.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
This is a lunar image from the the 9th March. It shows part of the Mare Imbrium with large crater Archimedes (bottom) forming a triangle with craters Aristillus above left and Autolycus above right.
Crater Cassini (with two craters within) lies to the top left of the group.
Prominent scar of the lunar Alpine Valley is towards the top left corner and the sinuous snake-like Hadley Rille ( near the site of the Apollo 15 landing) is visible near the Apennine Mountains to the right of Autolycus.
The moon was around 9.7 days old when this image was captured.
Imaged with a Celestron C11 SCT and a ZWO 290MM camera with IR pass filter.
Thanks for looking!
Processed using calibrated red, green, and blue filtered images of Saturn's Rings, Mimas, and Epimetheus, taken by Cassini on November 6 2007.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
The famous emergence of the 17-year Cicada is not scheduled, for my area, until next year (Brood 10).
However yesterday, I had over one-hundred individuals emerge (a year earlier than expected) in my yard (I counted their cast skins). I only found one adult which turned out to be a male Cassini's 17-year Cicada (Megicicada cassini).
Three species make up the brood 10 emergence, but since I only found one adult, the other two species may also have emerged yesterday in my yard.
As impressive as my hundred or so Periodical Cicada hatch was yesterday, I know it will pale in comparison to next year. I can't wait!!
Beaverbrook Environs, Howard County, Maryland.
A global infrared mosaic of Saturn’s moon Enceladus created using a complete dataset from the Cassini spacecraft has revealed new detail on the moon’s surface.
Cassini orbited Saturn and its moons from 2004 to 2017. The mission ended when the spacecraft was intentionally plunged into the planet’s atmosphere, but new discoveries are still being made with the data.
During the mission lifetime, Cassini flew by Enceladus 147 times, with 23 close encounters of the icy moon. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) collected data that can be used to reveal information on the temperature and composition of the surface, as well as the sizes and crystallinity of ice grains.
A study published in Icarus has produced a global spectral mosaic using the complete VIMS dataset. The full-colour images were created by combining three IR channels of the VIMS spectro-imager, represented here by red, green, and blue colours, and overlapping these on a mosaic created using the Imaging Science Subsystem on Cassini by another team.
The image shows five infrared views of Enceladus centred on the leading side, the Saturn-facing side, and the trailing side in the top row, and the North and South Pole in the bottom row. Click here for an annotated version. The globe can also be explored interactively.
The scientists used a photometric correction to reveal new details on the surface of the moon. Enceladus has a surface composed almost of pure water ice, which makes it highly reflective, but the observed brightness depends on the properties of the surface material, the surface shape, and the angle at which it is viewed. Correcting for these variations was necessary to show the differences in composition and physical state at the surface.
By using these improved photometric corrections, the scientists have been able to reveal spectral variations which correspond to the different colours in the images. These are particularly striking in the region with four large tectonic faults known as the Tiger Stripes at the South Pole. The image of the South Pole also reveals a clear boundary between terrains where the light red colour meets the blue region. The smooth red colour seen in the first image is likely due to recently exposed freshwater ice. This could be the surface signature of hotspots on the seafloor.
In the future the scientists plan to apply their technique to other icy moons to compare them with Enceladus. Similar infrared mapping by the Juice and Europa Clipper missions will be able to detect recent activity on Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede.
The Cassini mission is a cooperative project between NASA, ESA, and Italy's ASI space agency.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/LPG/CNRS/University of Nantes/Space Science Institute
The Grand Finale
On Sept. 15, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will complete its remarkable story of exploration with an intentional plunge into Saturn's atmosphere, ending its mission after nearly 20 years in space.
RGB natural color. Added blooming/white overlay at top right corner to cover over-exposure defects.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
In honor of Cassini's Grand Finale at Saturn, we're looking back on a very big discovery on a very small moon.
When Cassini arrived at Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, it saw curtains of icy material venting into space. Then, using the Composite Infrared Spectrometer aboard the spacecraft, scientists discovered that Enceladus's south pole was much warmer than expected. The strange temperature patterns on Enceladus suggested that the small, icy moon was up to something. Read more: www.instagram.com/p/BZCGUMgFN0D/
Processed using calibrated infrared, green, and ultraviolet filtered images of Enceladus taken by Cassini on August 1 2017.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
Processed using RED, GRN, BL1 filtered images taken by Cassini's WAC on August 19 2012.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
Phosphorus, a key chemical element for many biological processes, has been found in icy grains emitted by the small moon and is likely abundant in its subsurface ocean.
Using data collected by NASA’s Cassini mission, an international team of scientists has discovered phosphorus – an essential chemical element for life – locked inside salt-rich ice grains ejected into space from Enceladus.
The small moon is known to possess a subsurface ocean, and water from that ocean erupts through cracks in Enceladus' icy crust as geysers at its south pole, creating a plume. The plume then feeds Saturn's E ring (a faint ring outside of the brighter main rings) with icy particles.
During its mission at the gas giant from 2004 to 2017, Cassini flew through the plume and E ring numerous times. Scientists found that Enceladus' ice grains contain a rich array of minerals and organic compounds – including the ingredients for amino acids – associated with life as we know it.
In this image, seen as a bright arc in this 2006 observation by Cassini, Saturn’s E ring is fed with icy particles from Enceladus’ plume, creating wispy fingers of bright material that is backlit by the Sun. The shadowed hemisphere of the moon can be seen as a dark dot inside the ring.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
#NASA #Cassini #JPL #JetPropulsionLaboratory #NASAMarshall #SolarSystemandBeyond #space #astronomy #Saturn #astronomy #planet #Enceladus
NASA's Cassini spacecraft made its final approach to Saturn and dove into the planet's atmosphere on Friday, Sept. 15. Loss of contact with the Cassini spacecraft took place on Sept. 15 at 7:55:46 a.m. EDT (4:55:46 a.m. PDT).
This marvelous panoramic view of Saturn was created by combining a total of 165 images taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera over nearly three hours on Sept. 15, 2006. The full mosaic consists of three rows of nine wide-angle camera footprints; only a portion of the full mosaic is shown here. Color in the view was created by digitally compositing ultraviolet, infrared and clear filter images and was then adjusted to resemble natural color. The mosaic images were acquired as the spacecraft drifted in the darkness of Saturn's shadow for about 12 hours, allowing a multitude of unique observations of the microscopic particles that compose Saturn's faint rings.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at ciclops.org.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
The species, Magicicada cassini, is the least abundant of the three species of Brood X, Periodical Cicadas that are emerging from my yard. It also seems (based on three days of data) to be declining in numbers compared to the other two species. On May 13th it made up 8% of the emerged adults, on May 14th 5% and today May 15th only 2%. Just to be safe I took a photo of it today to make sure I had a photographic record of the species from the 2021 emergence.
To see the other two species of Brood X see: www.flickr.com/photos/dragonflyhunter/51182806043/in/phot... & www.flickr.com/photos/dragonflyhunter/51185133113/in/date...
Beaverbook Environs, Howard county, Maryland.
A short story about this image (in italian):
aliveuniverse.today/speciale-missioni/sistema-solare/cass...
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech - Processing: Elisabetta Bonora & Marco Faccin / aliveuniverse.today
Cassini captured this striking view of Saturn’s moon Dione on July 23, 2012. Dione is about 698 miles (1,123 kilometers) across. Its density suggests that about a third of the moon is made up of a dense core (probably silicate rock) with the remainder of its material being water ice. At Dione's average temperature of -304 degrees Fahrenheit (-186 degrees Celsius), ice is so hard it behaves like rock.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Monument celebrating Cassini spacecraft probe of the planet Saturn. At McMurry University, Abilene, Texas, USA.
Camera: 1952 Argus Forty medium-format camera with 75mm f4.5 Varex Anastigmat lens
Film: Ilford Delta 100
Developing: Caffenol-CM.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of Saturn, taken while the spacecraft was in Saturn's shadow. The cameras were turned toward Saturn and the sun so that the planet and rings are backlit. (The sun is behind the planet, which is shielding the cameras from direct sunlight.) In addition to the visual splendor, this special, very-high-phase viewing geometry lets scientists study ring and atmosphere phenomena not easily seen at a lower phase. Cassini's discoveries are feeding forward into future exploration of the solar system.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Saturn showing off the Cassini Division within its rings and the moon Titan directly above the planet. Taken with a ZWOASI 120MC planetary camera using an Explore Scientific 102ED refracting telescope.
Saturn is famous for its bright, glorious rings but in this picture, taken during Saturn's 2009 equinox, the rings are cast in a different light as sunlight hits the rings edge-on.
The equinox is a point in a planet's orbit where the Sun shines directly overhead at the equator. It occurs twice per orbit and on Earth it happens in March and September. At the equinox, day and night are almost equal and the Sun rises due east and sets due west. This year, for northern hemisphere dwellers, the spring equinox occurs on 20 March.
Further afield, the international Cassini mission captured a Saturnian equinox for the first time on 12 August 2009. Saturn's equinoxes occur approximately every 15 Earth years and the next one will take place on 6 May 2025.
When Saturn's equinox is viewed from Earth, the rings are seen edge-on and appear as a thin line – sometimes giving the illusion they’ve disappeared. In this image however, Cassini had a vantage point of 20 degrees above the ring plane, and viewed the planet from a distance of 847,000 kilometres. Its wide angle camera took 75 exposures over eight hours, which were then aligned and combined to create this mosaic.
As the Sun is striking the rings straight on, rather than illuminating them from above or below, the shadows cast by the rings onto the planet are compressed into a single narrow band on the planet.
The rings also appear darker than usual. This can cause out-of-plane structures to look brighter than normal and then cast shadows across the rings. These Saturnian shadow puppets only appear a few months before and after the equinox. The shadows that Cassini saw revealed new ‘mountains’ in the rings, and also discovered previously hidden moonlets. Radial markings known as spokes are also visible on the B ring on the right side of the image.
Several moons are also visible in the mosaic: Janus (lower left), Epimetheus (middle bottom), Pandora (just outside the rings on the right), and Atlas (inside the thin F ring on the right).
Cassini explored the Saturn system for 13 years. It is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and Italy’s ASI space agency. This image was first published in September 2009; read the full caption for more information and imaging details.
Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
During its seven-year Solstice Mission, Cassini watched as a huge storm erupted and encircled Saturn. Scientists think storms like this are related, in part, to seasonal effects of sunlight on Saturn's atmosphere.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Saturn's hexagonal polar jet stream is the shining feature of almost every view of the north polar region of Saturn. The region, in shadow for the first part of the Cassini mission, now enjoys full sunlight, which enables Cassini scientists to directly image it in reflected light.
Although the sunlight falling on the north pole of Saturn is enough to allow us to image and study the region, it does not provide much warmth. In addition to being low in the sky (just like summer at Earth's poles), the sun is nearly ten times as distant from Saturn as from Earth. This results in the sunlight being only about 1 percent as intense as at our planet.
This view looks toward Saturn from about 31 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 22, 2017 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 939 nanometers.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 560,000 miles (900,000 kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 33 miles (54 kilometers) per pixel.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Space science image of the week:
The international Cassini spacecraft has completed half of the 22 dives between Saturn and its rings before concluding its mission on 15 September. Cassini has been exploring the Saturnian system for 13 years, and has been making a series of ‘grand finale’ orbits since 22 April, taking the spacecraft into previously unexplored territory.
The image shown here was captured on 7 June, on the approach to the eighth dive. It is a raw image taken with the wide-angle camera and shows the planet, its rings, and a projection of Saturn’s shadow onto the inner rings.
Each of the 22 elliptical orbits takes about six and a half days to complete, and sends the spacecraft diving through a 2 400 km wide space at speeds of 121 000–126 000 km/h.
As well as returning stunning images, the dives are enabling unique data to be collected that will help scientists solve mysteries regarding the mass of Saturn’s rings and the planet’s rotation rate. In the final five orbits the spacecraft will also dip down to directly sample Saturn’s upper atmosphere.
Following the last orbit, the spacecraft will make a distant flyby of Titan that will alter Cassini’s trajectory one final time, sending it into a controlled plunge into the planet’s atmosphere to conclude this incredible mission.
Read more about the grand finale here and check out the latest images in the raw image gallery.
The Cassini–Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
On July 29, 2011, Cassini captured five of Saturn's moons in a single frame with its narrow-angle camera. This is a full-color look at a view that was originally published in September 2011 (see PIA14573).
Moons visible in this view: Janus (111 miles, or 179 kilometers across) is on the far left; Pandora (50 miles, or 81 kilometers across) orbits just beyond the thin F ring near the center of the image; brightly reflective Enceladus (313 miles, or 504 kilometers across) appears above center; Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea (949 miles, or 1,528 kilometers across), is bisected by the right edge of the image; and the smaller moon Mimas (246 miles, or 396 kilometers across) is seen just to the left of Rhea.
This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. Rhea is closest to Cassini here. The rings are beyond Rhea and Mimas. Enceladus is beyond the rings. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 684,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) from Rhea and 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Enceladus.
The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on Sept. 15, 2017.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Space Science image of the week:
In a fitting farewell to the planet that had been its home for over 13 years, the international Cassini spacecraft took one last, lingering look at Saturn and the splendid rings during the final leg of its journey and snapped a series of images that has been assembled into this new mosaic.
The mission concluded on 15 September with a planned dramatic plunge into the planet’s atmosphere. Two days earlier it captured wide-angle images to cover the planet and its main rings from one end to the other. The moons Prometheus, Pandora, Janus, Epimetheus, Mimas and Enceladus also make a faint appearance in the background. Can you spot them? (Click here for a labelled version of this image.)
The image shown here has been brightened to reveal the details of the moons and rings; the original natural colour view can be found here.
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 15° above the ring plane. Cassini was 1.1 million km from Saturn, on its final approach to the planet, when the 42 red, green and blue images in this mosaic were taken. They were combined and mosaicked together to create a natural-colour view. The image scale on Saturn is about 67 km/ pixel. The image scale on the moons varies from 59 km/pixel to 80 km/pixel. The Sun-planet-spacecraft angle is 138°.
The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and Italy’s ASI space agency.
The image was first released on 20 November. Read the full story via the NASA website.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Saturn’s moon Titan is enveloped in a thick atmosphere, but through the infrared eyes of the international Cassini mission, the moon’s myriad surface features are revealed in this exquisite global mosaic.
Observing the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in visible light is difficult due to the globe-enshrouding haze that envelops the moon. On 14 January 2005, the mystery as to what lay beneath the thick atmosphere was revealed as ESA’s Huygens probe – carried to Titan by Cassini – made the first successful landing on a world in the outer Solar System. During the two-and-a-half hour descent under parachute, features that looked remarkably like shore lines and river systems on Earth appeared from the haze. But rather than water, with surface temperatures of around –180ºC, the fluid involved here is methane, a simple organic compound that also contributes to the moon’s obscuring atmosphere.
Thanks to Cassini, which studied Saturn and its rings and moons for thirteen years, Titan was extensively mapped and analysed. One result is this stunning sequence of images created using data acquired by Cassini’s Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), whose infrared observations peered through Titan’s atmosphere, complementing the views obtained by Huygens during descent and on the surface. The maps combine data from the multitude of different observations made under a wide variety of illumination and viewing conditions over the course of the mission, stitched together in a seamless mosaic to provide the best representation of Titan’s surface to date.
The colours reflect variations in materials on the moon’s surface. For example, the moon’s equatorial dune fields appear a consistent brown colour, while bluish and purple hues may indicate materials enriched in water ice.
The image was first published in July 2018 – read more here about how the image was created, and enjoy a video featuring further stunning visuals here. The complete Cassini VIMS data archive of Saturn’s satellites is available here.
The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and Italy’s ASI space agency. The mission concluded in September 2017.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Nantes/University of Arizona
Processed using near-infrared (MT2, CB2) filtered WAC images taken by Cassini on September 22 2009.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
Space Science image of the week:
The international Cassini mission is drawing to a close in spectacular style: diving between Saturn and its innermost rings and exploring uncharted territory like never before.
The final set of five dives even dips the spacecraft into the top of Saturn’s atmosphere, giving Cassini’s instruments the chance to make the first direct sampling of the planet, studying its chemical composition and analysing its temperature at different altitudes. The dives will also provide close-up images of the planet’s atmospheric features, including its polar vortex and aurora.
Cassini is just completing its third of such atmospheric ‘dips’, and towards the end of the final orbit, will make a distant flyby of Titan, at 119 049 km on 11 September. But this will still be close enough to set Cassini on its final trajectory into the planet’s atmosphere, concluding its 13-year odyssey in the Saturn system.
Additional details of the mission’s grand finale will be presented by NASA tomorrow in a dedicated media briefing, scheduled for 18:00 GMT / 20:00 CEST.
The image shown here was captured during an earlier dive between the planet and its rings, at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers from Saturn on 13 May. It shows the thin sliver of Saturn’s 86 km-wide moon Prometheus lurking near ghostly structures in Saturn's narrow F-ring. Many of the narrow ring’s faint and wispy features result from its gravitational interactions with Prometheus.
Most of the small moon’s surface is in darkness because of the viewing geometry: Cassini was positioned behind Saturn and Prometheus with respect to the Sun, looking towards the moon’s dark side and just a bit of the moon’s sunlit northern hemisphere. Detail in the sunlit side of the rings shows a distinct difference in brightness between the outermost section of Saturn’s A ring (left of centre) and the rest of the ring, interior to the Keeler Gap (lower left).
The image was first released on 7 August 2017.
The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and Italy’s ASI space agency.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Saturn's shadow stretched beyond the edge of its rings for many years after Cassini first arrived at Saturn, casting an ever-lengthening shadow that reached its maximum extent at the planet's 2009 equinox. This image captured the moment in 2015 when the shrinking shadow just barely reached across the entire main ring system. The shadow will continue to shrink until the planet’s northern summer solstice, at which point it will once again start lengthening across the rings, reaching across them in 2019.
Like Earth, Saturn is tilted on its axis. And, just as on Earth, as the sun climbs higher in the sky, shadows get shorter. The projection of the planet's shadow onto the rings shrinks and grows over the course of its 29-year-long orbit, as the angle of the sun changes with respect to Saturn's equator.
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 11 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 16, 2015.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is about 90 miles (150 kilometers) per pixel.
The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, click here.
Saturn’s rings display their subtle colors in this view captured on Aug. 22, 2009, by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The particles that make up the rings range in size from smaller than a grain of sand to as large as mountains, and are mostly made of water ice. The exact nature of the material responsible for bestowing color on the rings remains a matter of intense debate among scientists.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. Cassini's narrow-angle camera took the images at a distance of approximately 1.27 million miles (2.05 million kilometers) from the center of the rings.
The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on Sept. 15, 2017.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute