Saturn at Opposition

Our solar system features eight planets, seen in this artist's diagram.

Bright icy fractures, or linea, cover the trailing hemisphere of Saturn's moon, Dione. The Cassini spacecraft imaged the fractured terrain at high resolution in October 2005 (See At Carthage Line...

Odysseus impact basin lies between night and day on Tethys. Lit terrain seen here is on the anti-Saturn side of Tethys (1,071 kilometers, or 665 miles across), or the side that always faces away f...

The northern and southern hemispheres of Tethys are seen in these polar stereographic maps, mosaicked from the best-available Cassini images. Each map is centered on one of the poles, and surface ...

Like a giant eye for the giant planet, Saturn's great vortex at its north pole appears to stare back at Cassini as Cassini stares at it.

This image, obtained by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on June 9, 2018, shows subtle features on Ceres from an altitude of about 33 miles (53 kilometers).

Prometheus tugs icy particles from the F ring into fanciful shapes like ropes of glowing neon. Although Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across) is overexposed here, the moon's irregular out...

This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks toward Saturn's icy moon Dione, with giant Saturn and its rings in the background, just prior to the mission's final close approach to the moon on Aug...

+ Annotated version The tiny wavemaker moon Daphnis is dwarfed by the very waves it creates on the edge of the Keeler gap. Daphnis (5 miles, or 8 kilometers across), a tiny dot in the Keeler gap, ...

+ Annotated Version This global map of Saturn's moon Mimas was created using images taken during Cassini spacecraft flybys, with Voyager images filling in the gaps in Cassini's coverage. The moon...

This collage shows some of the most interesting geological sites that NASA's Dawn spacecraft has revealed at dwarf planet Ceres.

+ Xanadu's Channels and Dunes (Annotated version) + Related image In a sweeping mosaic of the low latitudes of Saturn's moon Titan, the bright landmass of the enigmatic region known...

+ View Full Res These images were obtained by Cassini's radar instrument during a flyby on Dec. 5, 2008. The radar antenna was pointing toward Titan at an altitude of 960 kilometers (597 miles) d...

The trailing hemisphere of Saturn's moon Rhea seen here in natural color, displays bright, wispy terrain that is similar in appearance to that of Dione, another one of Saturn's moon. 

These six infrared images of Saturn's moon Titan were created using 13 years of data acquired by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer instrument on board NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Saturn's second largest moon Rhea pops in and out of view behind the planet's rings in this image from the Cassini spacecraft, which includes the smaller moon Epimetheus. Rhea (1,528 kilometers, o...

Three sizeable impact craters, including one with a marked central peak, lie along the line that divides day and night on the Saturnian moon, Dione (dee-OH-nee), which is 1,118 kilometers, or 695 m...

This image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows a portion of the southern hemisphere of dwarf planet Ceres from an altitude of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). The image, with a resolution of 450 f...

Temperature changes mapped with Cassini's composite and infrared spectrometer throughout Saturn's main rings show the ring temperatures decreasing with the increase of the Sun-spacecraft-ring angle...

The Cassini spacecraft examines the anti-Saturnian side of Dione and shows the cratered surface east of the moon's distinctive wispy terrain.

This moody scene from NASA's Dawn spacecraft taken on Dec. 23, 2015, captures a portion of the southern hemisphere of Ceres. The image is centered at approximately 64 degrees south latitude, 291 de...

Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system is seen in the highest resolution obtained to date by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. 

Shadows darken parts of some of Janus' large craters as Cassini takes a close look during its flyby of this Saturnian moon on March 27, 2012. See Profile of Janus and Blasted Janus for higher reso...

From its station nearly 1.2 billion kilometers (746 million miles) from Earth, the stalwart Cassini spacecraft sends holiday greetings to Earth with this lovely color portrait of Saturn and two of ...

NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image of a dark band on asteroid Vesta with its framing camera on August 19, 2011. The image has a resolution of about 260 meters per pixel.