Cassini's striking mosaic of Saturn and its rings

NASA. LARGE FORMAT. NASA's Cassini spacecraft hovered over Saturn to reveal this majestic view of the golden planet and its main rings. The view is in natural color, just as human eyes would have seen it. This mosaic was made from 36 images in three color filters obtained by Cassini's imaging science subsystem on October 10, 2013. The observation and resulting image mosaic were planned as one of three images for Cassini's 2013 Scientist for a Day essay contest. Saturn sports weather bands of different colors in this image. The rings shown here include Saturn's main rings. The D ring, the innermost, and the C, B and A rings are easily visible. The F ring is also present, but is difficult to see without increasing the image contrast. (The rings have been named in the order of their discovery rather than their position around Saturn). The rings also cast a shadow on Saturn at the planet's limb in the lower right quadrant.