Starship Asterisk*

Titan Beyond the Rings

Explanation: When orbiting Saturn, be sure to watch for breathtaking superpositions of moons and rings. One such picturesque vista was visible recently to the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. In 2006 April, Cassini captured Saturn's A and F rings stretching in front of cloud-shrouded Titan. Near the rings and appearing just above Titan was Epimetheus, a moon which orbits just outside the F ring. The dark space in the A ring is called the Encke Gap, although several thin knotted ringlets and even the small moon Pan orbit there.

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I love this stunning image!

Such a magnificent system.

Bravo Cassini!

Someone please explain: I don't know if it's the geometry or the optics, but how does Titan look so big from the other side of such a large portion of the rings' arch? Or is this a superposition of two photos?

The rings always remind me of the old vinyl records...the spaces and grooves on an LP separating songs.

This is a great view...

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I think Cassini may be the best engineering feat ever.
I know "recently" is a relative term, but is it the best one for an eight year old photogrph?

TJK wrote:Someone please explain: I don't know if it's the geometry or the optics, but how does Titan look so big from the other side of such a large portion of the rings' arch? Or is this a superposition of two photos?

Titan is quite large. However, some context helps to bring it down to size. Note the simulation also seems to contain the fainter parts of the ring system which aren't actually seen in the picture.

The following pictures were made using http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/
Tell it you want to see Titan as seen from Cassini on April 28 2006 at 8:15 UTC. I changed it to 8:13 UTC by modifying the GET variables in the URL after submitting.

geckzilla wrote:

TJK wrote:Someone please explain: I don't know if it's the geometry or the optics, but how does Titan look so big from the other side of such a large portion of the rings' arch? Or is this a superposition of two photos?

Titan is quite large. However, some context helps to bring it down to size. Note the simulation also seems to contain the fainter parts of the ring system which aren't actually seen in the picture.

The following pictures were made using http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/
Tell it you want to see Titan as seen from Cassini on April 28 2006 at 8:15 UTC. I changed it to 8:13 UTC by modifying the GET variables in the URL after submitting.

titan_rfov15_2006-118T08.13.jpg

titan_rfov5_2006-118T08.13.jpg

titan_rfov1_2006-118T08.13.jpg

Adding on to what geck said, it is actually quite a small portion of the rings that we see in the APOD. The Encke Gap is much narrower than the Cassini Division and is a lot closer to the outer edge of the rings. It is quite difficult to even detect the Encke Gap photographically from Earth with a typical amateur scope, while the Cassini Division is quite easily observed just through an eyepiece. From the distance of the Cassini probe, Titan appeared about three times smaller than the Earth's Moon appears to us from Earth. The height of this impossibly beautiful APOD is only about a quarter of a degree.

As others have said, it is a great image.

I wonder what the ring system would look like from Saturn? Seeing them from there would I suspect be a truly out-of-this-world experience.

DavidLeodis wrote:I wonder what the ring system would look like from Saturn? Seeing them from there would I suspect be a truly out-of-this-world experience.

The trick with viewing anything from Saturn is finding a place to sit down. But here are some illustrations from a Planetary Society blog post showing what they'd look like to us, more or less, if they surrounded Earth.

Rob

rstevenson wrote:

DavidLeodis wrote:I wonder what the ring system would look like from Saturn? Seeing them from there would I suspect be a truly out-of-this-world experience.

The trick with viewing anything from Saturn is finding a place to sit down. But here are some illustrations from a Planetary Society blog post showing what they'd look like to us, more or less, if they surrounded Earth.

Rob

Stunning!

But if the Earth had rings like that we would get a lot more shade than we do now, which may or may not be a good thing. And we would get a lot more meteors! Ouch!
Ann

rstevenson wrote:

DavidLeodis wrote:I wonder what the ring system would look like from Saturn? Seeing them from there would I suspect be a truly out-of-this-world experience.

The trick with viewing anything from Saturn is finding a place to sit down. But here are some illustrations from a Planetary Society blog post showing what they'd look like to us, more or less, if they surrounded Earth.

Rob

Thanks Rob for that link to its fascinating illustrations.

PS. Your "The trick with viewing anything from Saturn is finding a place to sit down" made me .