Pioneer 11 Image of Saturn and its Moon Titan
Date: 26 Aug 1979

NASA's Pioneer 11 image of Saturn and its moon Titan at the upper left. The irregularities in ring silhouette and shadow are due to technical anomalies in the preliminary data later corrected. At the time this image was taken Pioneer was, at that time, 2,846,000 km (1,768,422 miles) from Saturn.


Among Pioneer 11's many discoveries are Saturn's F ring and a new moon. It recorded the planet's overall temperature at -180°C, indicating that it emits 2.5 times as much heat as it receives from the Sun. Photographs revealed a more featureless atmosphere than that of Jupiter, and calculations based on data from Pioneer 11 suggested that Saturn is primarily liquid hydrogen with a core of about 10 Earth masses.


Last Update: 11 Apr 2011 (AMB)

Credit: NASA/GRIN