The Cassini Division

The Cassini spacecraft looks between Saturn's A and B rings to spy structure in the Cassini Division.

The Cassini Division, occupying the middle and left of the image, contains five dim bands of ring material, but not all of the division is shown in this image. The B ring is on the right of the image. The Huygens Gap is the widest black swath near the middle of the image. See PIA11142, PIA08901 and PIA08330 to learn more. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from about 3 degrees above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on September 3, 2010. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 443,000 kilometers (275,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute