NASA shares ‘breathtaking’ image of Saturn's iconic rings, netizens react
A post shared by NASA (@nasa)The black-and-white view of the planet was captured when its half portion was lit with Sun rays. Closely observing the photo would help viewers identify Saturn's moon Pandora, which is visible as a tiny dot in the upper right of the image, nearly beyond the F ring.“Saturn’s graceful lanes of orbiting ice — its iconic rings — wind their way around the planet to pass beyond the horizon in this view taken on Aug.
12, 2017, by the wide-angle camera on the @NASASolarSystem Cassini spacecraft," wrote NASA while sharing the image on Instagram.Cassini was a joint space program to Saturn by NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The three agencies had sent Cassini, a sophisticated robotic spacecraft, to study Saturn and its complex system of rings and moons in unprecedented detail.The spacecraft also carried a probe, Huygens, built by ESA, to the Saturn system.
Scientists were able to capture spectacular images of the planet with the help of the probe. Huyugens returned spectacular images and other science results during a two-and-a-half-hour descent through Titan, Saturn's moon, crazy atmosphere.The discovery of a global ocean, indicating the presence of water on Saturn, was one of the key discoveries of Cassini.
The mission was concluded in 2017. During the mission, scientists discovered icy plumes spraying from fractures on Saturn's moon Enceladus.
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