distance of saturn's ring from itself
This image shows a region in Saturnâs outer B ring. NASAâs Cassini spacecraft viewed this area at a level of detail twice as high as it had ever been observed before. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 32,000 miles (51,000 kilometers) from the rings, and looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings.
Density wave in Saturnâs A ring (at left). Density waves are accumulations of particles at certain distances from the planet. This feature is filled with clumpy perturbations, which researchers informally refer to as âstraw.â The wave itself is created by the gravity of the moons Janus and Epimetheus, which share the same orbit around Saturn. Elsewhere, the scene is dominated by âwakesâ from a recent pass of the ring moon Pan. This view was obtained at a distance of approximately 34,000 miles (56,000 kilometers) from the rings and looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings. Image scale is about a quarter-mile (340 meters) per pixel.