Cassini Flies By Earth

NEAR Shoemaker took this picture at 8:45 p.m. EST on January 25, 2001, during one of the spacecraft's low-altitude passes over the surface of Eros. 

As the Dawn spacecraft flies through space toward the dwarf planet Ceres, the unexplored world appears to its camera as a bright light in the distance, full of possibility for scientific discovery.

The rings of Saturn glow softly as sunlight from below wends its way through. Some of the Sun's light bounces off the rings' opposite side and can be seen illuminating Saturn's night side southern ...

The northern and southern hemispheres of Saturn's moon Mimas are seen in these polar stereographic maps, mosaicked from the best-available Cassini images.

A distant glimpse of Iapetus reveals details within the dark terrain of Cassini Regio, including an impact basin at top that is roughly 400 kilometers (250 miles) wide. Researchers remain unsure a...

Dione's lit hemisphere faces away from Cassini's camera, yet the moon's darkened surface features are dimly illuminated in this image, due to Saturnshine.

Prometheus poses here with its latest creation: a dark, diagonal gore in the tenuous material interior to Saturn's F ring. The shepherd moon creates a new gore each time it comes closest to the F r...

The moon Prometheus casts a shadow on Saturn's F ring near a streamer-channel it has created on the ring. The image was taken as the planet approached its August 2009 equinox. Prometheus (86 kilom...

As if trying to get our attention, Mimas is positioned against the shadow of Saturn's rings, bright on dark. As we near summer in Saturn's northern hemisphere, the rings cast ever larger shadows on...

This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft of asteroid Vesta shows Aelia crater with a larger, more degraded crater to the left. Dark and bright material crops out from Aelia's rim and slumps towards i...

The thin sliver of Saturn's moon Prometheus lurks near ghostly structures in Saturn's narrow F ring in this view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Many of the narrow ring's faint and wispy features r...

A huge arrow-shaped storm blows across the equatorial region of Titan in this image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, chronicling the seasonal weather changes on Saturn's largest moon. This storm cr...

+ View Movie Cassini stares deep into the swirling hurricane-like vortex at Saturn's south pole, where the vertical structure of the clouds is highlighted by shadows. Such a storm, with a well-de...

This true color mosaic of Jupiter was constructed from images taken by the narrow angle camera onboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft on December 29, 2000, during its closest approach to the giant plane...

During its historic close encounter with Phoebe, the Cassini spacecraft captured a series of high resolution images of the small moon, six of which have been put together to create this mosaic.

Two-Tone Titan June 16, 2004 Full-Res: PIA05407 Cassini¿s finely-tuned vision reveals hazes high in the skies over Titan in this ...

This composite was produced from images returned yesterday, January 14, 2005, by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during its successful descent to land on Titan. It shows the boundary betw...

This detailed look at Saturn's A ring captures Daphnis in the narrow Keeler Gap. The small moon creates complex wave patterns in the gap edges that Cassini scientists are working to understand. To...

A Halo of Moons September 6, 2004 Full-Res: PIA05435 Saturn wears a halo of four moons in this wide angle camera image taken by th...

A Delta II-Heavy rocket propelled NASA's Dawn spacecraft into space on its journey to the asteroid belt. 

This map of the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus, generated from images taken by NASA's Cassini and Voyager spacecraft, illustrates the imaging coverage planned for Cassini's very close flyby of ...

Zadeni Crater, at 80 miles (128 kilometers) wide, is a prominent impact feature in the southern hemisphere of Ceres. This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows terrain in Zadeni's interior, which...

Stormy Weather November 12, 2004 Full-Res: PIA06519 This Cassini view shows a bright storm that appeared in Saturn's southern hemisph...

Saturn's moon Tethys casts a wide shadow over the planet's F and A rings. Tethys itself is not visible in this image. As Saturn approaches its August 2009 equinox, the planet's moons cast shadows ...

This image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows a portion of the southern hemisphere of dwarf planet Ceres from an altitude of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers). The image, with a resolution of 1,4...