Plateaus and Gaps

December 17, 2004

PIA Number	PIA06540
Language	english

Plateaus and Gaps December 13, 2004	Full-Res: PIA06540
This fantastic close-up of Saturn's outer C ring shows large and sharp changes in brightness across the rings, owing to the extreme variations in ring particle concentrations at different distances from the planet. The dark gap running through the center contains the Maxwell ringlet, as well as a faint, narrow ringlet discovered in Cassini images. Another very dark region to the right of the Maxwell gap is also a narrow gap.

Plateaus and Gaps

December 13, 2004

Full-Res: PIA06540

This fantastic close-up of Saturn's outer C ring shows large and sharp changes in brightness across the rings, owing to the extreme variations in ring particle concentrations at different distances from the planet. The dark gap running through the center contains the Maxwell ringlet, as well as a faint, narrow ringlet discovered in Cassini images. Another very dark region to the right of the Maxwell gap is also a narrow gap.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org .

Image Credit:

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute