Saturn at Opposition

NASA's Cassini spacecraft zoomed by Saturn's icy moon Enceladus on Oct. 14, 2015, capturing this stunning image of the moon's north pole.

Saturn's clouds and hazes at three different levels in the atmosphere are depicted in the image on the right, as observed by the visual infrared mapping spectrometer on the Cassini spacecraft. In ...

These images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft are located in asteroid Vesta's Gegania quadrangle, a little south of Vesta's equator; boulders can be seen on the bottom side of the crater.

This wide angle field-of-view artist's rendering shows the surface of Pandora, one of the shepherds of the F ring, a thin wispy band of material just on the outside of the main rings of Saturn. The...

This area imaged by the Cassini radar system during the spacecraft's third close flyby of Titan on Feb. 15, 2005, is just to the east of the Circus Maximus impact feature (see http://photojournal.j...

Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, and Jeff Cuzzi, Saturn ring specialist, stand in front of a section of the mural showing the ring particles with Saturn looming in the background.

    Download the free RealPlayer 8 Basic   Inner Radiation Belts of Jupiter February 27, 2002   Details in radiation belts close to Jupiter are mapped from measurements that NASA's Cass...

Saturn, stately and resplendent in this natural color view, dwarfs the icy moon Rhea. Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) orbits beyond the rings on the right of the image. The moon Tethy...

This image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows the surface of dwarf planet Ceres from an altitude of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). The image, with a resolution of 450 feet (140 meters) per pixe...

This true color picture was assembled from Voyager 2 Saturn images obtained August 4, 1981 from a distance of 21 million kilometers (13 million miles) on the spacecraft's approach trajectory. T...

The brightly lit limb of a crescent Enceladus looks ethereal against the blackness of space. The rest of the moon, lit by light reflected from Saturn, presents a ghostly appearance.

The Cassini spacecraft awaits placement of its payload fairing at Launch Pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Station. Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Ita...

The Cassini spacecraft peers closely at the layers of organic haze in Titan's upper atmosphere during a recent flyby. Planet-sized Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across. The image was ta...

Though much farther away from Cassini when the spacecraft acquired this image, Saturn's second-largest moon Rhea still dwarfs the brightest icy moon Enceladus in this scene. Rhea is 1,528 kilomete...

The Sun sinks below the horizon in this stunning panoramic view captured by NASA's Spirit Mars rover in 2005.

Thieving Moon December 3, 2004 Full-Res: PIA06143 As it completed its first orbit of Saturn, Cassini zoomed in on the rings to catch t...

Using its radar system, the Cassini spacecraft has imaged new lakes on Titan. The large dark patch seen on this image, at high latitudes surrounding Titan's north pole, is most likely a hydrocarb...

Flying over the unlit side of Saturn's rings, the Cassini spacecraft captures Saturn's glow, represented in brilliant shades of electric blue, sapphire and mint green, while the planet's shadow cas...

At least four distinct plumes of water ice spew out from the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus in this dramatically illuminated image. Light reflected off Saturn is illuminating the su...

Io Above Clouds on New Year's Day, 2001 January 23, 2001 The moon Io floats above the cloudtops of Jupiter in this image captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on the dawn of the new mill...

+ Unannotated version Five images of Saturn's rings, taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft between 2009 and 2012, show clouds of material ejected from impacts of small objects into the rings. Clockwi...

Bright spokes grace the B ring in this image which also includes the shadow of the moon Mimas and was taken about a month after Saturn's August 2009 equinox. The spokes are the ghostly radial mark...

Titan in Natural Color Full-Res: PIA06081 Despite the views of the surface of Saturn's Titan moon provided by the Cassini spacecraft...

As NASA's Dawn spacecraft takes off for its next destination, this mosaic synthesizes some of the best views the spacecraft had of the giant asteroid Vesta. The set of three craters known as the 's...

This 1981 Voyager 2 image shows the vast Saturn ring system, as well as three small icy satellites and the shadow of a fourth. Saturn is the second largest planet in the Solar System. It has a vol...