Saturn without its rings

Over at The Planetary Society, Emily Lakdawalla highlighted an image taken by the Cassini spacecraft of Saturn separate from its rings.

This enormous mosaic showing the flattened globe of Saturn floating amongst the complete disk of its rings must surely be counted among the great images of the Cassini mission. From Earth, we never see Saturn separate from its rings. Here, we can see the whole thing, a gas giant like Jupiter, separated at last from the rings that encircle it.

Taking this idea one step further, I removed the rings completely, along with the “ringlight” lighting up the night hemisphere, creating a more-or-less pure look of what Saturn would look like without its rings.

Larger version is available on Mlkshk.

• Cassini
• photography
• Saturn
• science
• space