Explanation:
As a present to APOD readers, digital imager Mattias Malmer
offers a very high resolution view of big beautiful Saturn.
A labor of love, his full mosaic, composite image is contained
in a large 5 megabyte jpeg file
(preview here,
download here) and
spans the gorgeous gas giant from ring tip to ring tip.
It was pieced together from 102 frames
(N00020905 to N00021033) recorded by the
Cassini
spacecraft ISS on October 6, 2004.
The red, green, and blue frames are all uncalibrated, unvalidated
images available to the public through the
Cassini web site.
Malmer's full panorama has a pixel size of 8400 by 3300, so
only a substantially cropped version appears above.
Enjoy the view and have a safe and Happy Holiday Season!