Saturn at Opposition

This frame from an animation shows the north pole of dwarf planet Ceres as seen by the Dawn spacecraft on April 10, 2015. Dawn was at a distance of 21,000 miles (33,000 kilometers) when its framing...

Images recorded by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe descent imager/spectral radiometer between 11 and 5 miles (17 and 8 kilometers) were assembled to produce this panoramic mosaic. The pro...

As it glanced around the Saturn system one final time, NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured this view of the planet's giant moon Titan.

This global digital map of Saturn's moon Dione was created using data taken during Cassini and Voyager spacecraft flybys. The map is an equidistant projection and has a scale of 977 meters (3,205 f...

+ View Full Res This image was obtained by Cassini's radar instrument during a flyby on Feb. 22, 2007. The radar antenna was pointing toward Titan at an altitude of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) ...

This atmospheric close-up shows a bright, somewhat distorted feature in Saturn's southern hemisphere. This feature might be a transient eddy which formed and then collided with an obstacle (perhaps...

This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows the brightest area seen on asteroid Vesta so far. It shows a crater located inside the rim of the Rheasilvia basin at the south pole of Vesta.

Saturn's south pole, seen here by the Cassini spacecraft, is in twilight as Saturn nears equinox (August 2009). Soon, the pole will enter its 15-year-long night. This mosaic consists of four image...

This image of Claudia AV-L-23, from the atlas of the giant asteroid Vesta, was created from images taken as NASA's Dawn mission flew around the object, also known as a protoplanet.

At 1,528 kilometers (950 miles) in diameter, Rhea is the second largest satellite of Saturn. Only Titan is larger. Bright wispy streaks cover one hemisphere of Rhea.

Saturn's moon Dione hangs in front of Saturn's rings in this view taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during the inbound leg of its last close flyby of the icy moon.

This Cassini image of Saturn's moon Enceladus shows a region containing bizarre, wrinkled terrain. Enceladus is covered with bright water ice. The part of its surface visible here appears to be la...

Titan's fast-rotating atmosphere creates circumpolar bands in the north. The Cassini spacecraft acquired this view of the smoggy moon following a flyby of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles a...

This image of a small crater north of Ceres' Datan Crater was obtained by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on June 9, 2018 from an altitude of about 48 miles (77 kilometers).

This image of asteroid Vesta from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows a particularly smooth part of the giant asteroid's surface, likely covered in fine-grained regolith material.

This image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows dwarf planet Ceres from an altitude of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers). The image, with a resolution of 1,400 feet (410 meters) per pixel, was take...

This image is the first skeet-shoot image taken during Cassini's very close flyby of Enceladus on Aug. 11, 2008. It captures a region near the Cairo Sulcus on Enceladus' south polar terrain that i...

The early morning Moon sets behind Turret Arch in Arches National Park, Utah on July 28, 2018.

Saturn's atmosphere is essentially transparent at wavelengths visible to the human eye, but when the view through the atmosphere is oblique, as it is along the planet's limb (edge), it will distort...

The Philae lander of the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission took this self-portrait of the spacecraft on Sept. 7, 2014, at a distance of about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from comet 67P/Churyumov...

Astronaut James B. Irwin, lunar module pilot, works at the Lunar Roving Vehicle during the first Apollo 15 lunar surface extravehicular activity (EVA) at the Hadley-Apennine landing site.

Titan's detached, high-altitude haze layer encircles its smoggy globe in this ultraviolet view, which also features the moon's north polar hood. The northern hemisphere is currently in its Winter s...

This set of four images obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows some of the more bizarre trails that were dragged out from Saturn's F ring by objects about a half mile (1 kilometer) in diameter...

The shepherd moon Pan orbits Saturn in the Encke gap while the A ring surrounding the gap displays wave features created by interactions between the ring particles and Saturnian moons. Pan (17 mil...

Images of Jupiter's day and night sides taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Jan. 1, 2001, show that storms visible on the dayside are the sources of visible lightning when viewed on the night sid...