Remember those pictures of Saturn’s eclipse that the Cassini spacecraft took back in July of this year? They’ve been combining all the different images into several gorgeous mosaics that are so pristine they look computer-animated. This one, which was  just released today, shows us the dark side of Saturn as it’s never been seen before.
Jesus, would you look at that, though? Unless you don’t actually know what you’re looking at, of course. Then you should check out this nifty annotated version of the image that can also be found on the CICLOPS page (click to embiggen):
The mosaic shown here was created from 141 of the 323 images that Cassini shot on July 14th. It covers an area about 404,880 miles (651,591 km) wide, which makes the scale about 45 miles per pixel. Cassini was  746,000 miles away from the planet when it took the images; this angle shows us about 17 degrees below the ring plane. And if you look very closely? You can even see Earth, Mars, and Venus in the background. The annotations help there, of course. Carl Sagan wasn’t kidding about that whole “pale blue dot” thing.  Excuse us, we have to go lie down for a little while. Space is very disorienting.
(via Universe Today, images via NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)
- Here’s another amazing picture of Saturn from a different angle
- And here’s another one of Saturn’s moon, MimasÂ
- Are you in NASA’s composite image of Earthlings waving to Saturn?
