| Saturn in Color April 29, 2004 |
Full-Res: PIA05389 |
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Saturn and its rings completely fill the field of view of Cassini's narrow angle camera in this natural color image taken on March 27, 2004. This is the last single ¿eyeful¿ of Saturn and its rings achievable with the narrow angle camera on approach to the planet. From now until orbit insertion, Saturn and its rings will be larger than the field of view of the narrow angle camera. Color variations between atmospheric bands and features in the southern hemisphere of Saturn, as well as subtle color differences across the planet¿s middle B ring, are now more distinct than ever. Color variations generally imply different compositions. The nature and causes of any compositional differences in both the atmosphere and the rings are major questions to be investigated by Cassini scientists as the mission progresses. The bright blue sliver of light in the northern hemisphere is sunlight passing through the Cassini Division in Saturn's rings and being scattered by the cloud-free upper atmosphere.
Moons visible in this image are (clockwise from top right): Enceladus (499 kilometers or 310 miles across), Mimas (398 kilometers or 247 miles across), Tethys (1060 kilometers or 659 miles across) and Epimetheus (116 kilometers or 72 miles across). Epimetheus is dim and appears just above the left edge of the rings. Brightnesses have been exaggerated to aid visibility. The image is a composite of three exposures, in red, green and blue, taken when the spacecraft was 47.7 million kilometers (29.7 million miles) from the planet. The image scale is 286 kilometers (178 miles) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, 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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
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The ring swirling around Saturn consists of chunks of ice and dust. Saturn itself is made of ammonia ice and methane gas. The little dark spot on Saturn is the shadow from Saturn's moon Enceladus.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided images of Saturn in many colors, from black-and-white, to orange, to blue, green, and red. But in this picture, image processing specialists have worked to provide a crisp, extremely accurate view of Saturn, which highlights the planet's pastel colors. Bands of subtle colour - yellows, browns, grays - distinguish differences in the clouds over Saturn, the second largest planet in the solar system.
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Even through a small telescope, Saturn takes on a beautiful pale yellow with hints of orange. With a more powerful telescope, like Hubble, or images captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, you can see subtle cloud layers, swirling storms mixing orange and white together.
You can also check out these cool telescopes that will help you see the beauty of planet Saturn.
But what gives Saturn its color?
Like Jupiter, Saturn is made almost entirely of hydrogen, a small amount of helium, and then trace amounts of other compounds, like ammonia, water vapor and hydrocarbons.
The colors we see come just from the upper cloud layers of Saturn, which are largely composed of ammonia crystals, and the lower level clouds are either ammonium hydrosulfide or water.
Saturn has a banded pattern in its atmosphere, similar to Jupiter, but they’re much fainter and wider near the equator. It also has long-lived storms – nothing like Jupiter’s Great Red Spot – which often occur when the planet nears the summer solstice for the northern hemisphere.
Some photographs of Saturn captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft make the planet look blue, similar to Uranus. But this is probably just because of how the light is scattering from Cassini’s perspective.
This article has a nice full-color image of Saturn, and another nice wallpaper of Saturn.
Here’s a beautiful image of Saturn from Solar Views, and a false color image from Hubble.
We have recorded two episodes of Astronomy Cast just about Saturn. The first is Episode 59: Saturn, and the second is Episode 61: Saturn’s Moons.