Saturn up close

[Hum]

NASA?s Cassini spacecraft has compiled an incredibly detailed, never-before-seen view of Saturn that is a visual treat to behold.

For readers, the smaller images housed within this article truly don't do the images justice. You'll want to download the full 9000x3500-size image in all of its 21MB glory.

Back on July 19, 2013, Cassini was positioned to capture the images of Saturn with the sun largely blocked behind Saturn?s circumference, providing near-perfect backlighting.

The outer space photo shoot resulted in incredibly detailed images of Saturn, its seven moons, the planet?s inner rings and even images of Earth in the distance.

Over the course of about four hours, Cassini?s wide-angle cameras captured 323 images in blue, green and red spectral filters. Those images were then combined together to create the most accurate representation of Saturn and its seven moons. Amazingly, the images capture 404,880 miles of space.

The composite image and an explanation of the shoot is hosted on the site for the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) website.

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hi-rez link

[Shiranui]

The people behind the taking of this picture are the closest thing we have to gods.

[DocM]

This view needs to be in the next Star Trek film. Just imagine it on IMAX 3D :ninja:

[+Raze Subscriber²]

Beautiful!

[Growled Member]

That is awesome.

[NightScreams]

Looks overly fake to me, I prefer the regular views.

[Crisp]

And if Cassini gets axed next year, we wont be seeing these kind of awesome images of our planets :(

[spacer]

What's new about this picture? It's not a new picture. I've seen it before. Is it higher resolution or something?

[Crisp]

What's new about this picture? It's not a new picture. I've seen it before. Is it higher resolution or something?

 

The image above was taken recently and is more well looked upon because it features Earth, Venus and Mars from Saturn. Cassini has taken other similar images of Saturn in the past, like this one from 2006. Not much of a difference, just a higher resolution of when they stitched it together I guess?

[spacer]

The image above was taken recently and is more well looked upon because it features Earth, Venus and Mars from Saturn. Cassini has taken other similar images of Saturn in the past, like this one from 2006. Not much of a difference, just a higher resolution of when they stitched it together I guess?

Yeah, that's the one that I was talking about. I guess this one is different if it does contain more planets.

[i_was_here]

Looks overly fake to me, I prefer the regular views.

I was thinking the same thing. I thought it was a vectorized image or something.