Explanation:
If this is Saturn, where are the rings?
When Saturn's "appendages"
disappeared
in 1612, Galileo did not understand why.
Later that century, it became understood that
Saturn's unusual protrusions were rings and that when the
Earth crosses the ring plane,
the edge-on rings will appear to disappear.
This is because Saturn's rings are confined to a plane many times thinner, in proportion, than a
razor blade.
In modern times, the
robot Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn now also crosses
Saturn's ring plane.
A series of plane crossing images from 2005 February
was dug out of the vast
online Cassini raw image archive by interested Spanish amateur
Fernando Garcia Navarro.
Pictured above, digitally cropped and set in representative colors,
is the striking result.
Saturn's thin ring plane
appears in blue, bands and clouds in
Saturn's upper atmosphere
appear in gold.
Since Saturn just
passed its equinox, today the ring plane is pointed close to the Sun and the rings could not cast the high
dark shadows seen across the top of this image, taken back in 2005.
Moons appear as bumps in the rings.
digg_url = 'http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100215.html'; digg_skin = 'compact';
