NASA picked the 100 greatest images of Saturn from its Cassini mission - here are some of the best
This grainy image reveals a deep mystery of Saturn: "propeller objects" (the white streaks) that fail to carve out their own lanes in the rings.
The gravity of Prometheus — a small, potato-shaped moon lurking in Saturn's F-ring — was found to create "streamers" in ring material.
Though gossamer-thin, Cassini showed that Saturn's rings have complex structure. These roughly mile-high peaks cast shadows on nearby ring material.
This weird view shows how Saturn's outer atmosphere distorts light from rings located behind it.
Just like ice in Earth's atmosphere, Saturn's rings can produce rainbow-hued halos.
The planet's inner C-ring is almost translucent in this photo, showing the blue-hazed limb of Saturn's atmosphere behind it.
Cassini also caught stunning close-ups of Saturn's rings, which are now thought to be millions of years old.
Dione, a small icy moon, is dominated by Saturn and its ring shadows in this image.
...And pockmarked Hyperion.
Cassini inventoried Saturn's other weird moons, too, including Iapetus...
Ligeia Mare is Titan's largest lake. It's full of hydrocarbons like ethane and methane.
In January 2004, Cassini dropped off Huygens — a European-built lander — on Titan, leading to the first alien-moon landing in human history.
Near-infrared photos cut through Titan's clouds and haze to reveal its complex surface.
Titan's atmosphere is twice as thick as Earth's. The moon has clouds, weather, and even liquid lakes. Cassini caught this glint of sunlight reflecting off of Titan's largest lake in 2009.
This shot shows Saturn's second-largest moon, Rhea, eclipsing Titan.
The probe's views of Titan in front of Saturn were striking.
Titan, Saturn's largest moon (left), is the size of planet Mercury. Cassini used its gravity to change its orbit and visit targets of interest.
Cassini flew through jets of Enceladus' ocean that shoot out of the moon's south pole. The probe "tasted" the spray and revealed that the ocean was warm and possibly habitable to alien microbes.
The star of the Cassini mission was Enceladus: a small, ice-encrusted moon that hides an ocean.
Near-infrared photos revealed Saturn in a whole different light. (This image is colorized to highlight different wavelengths.)
Here Saturn appears to float. In fact, the planet is so gaseous it'd float on water (if there was an ocean big enough).
Cassini snapped this photo of Saturn while passing through the planet's shadow.
The book includes beautiful views of Saturn. This image shows the planet's north pole and its hexagonal blue-yellow storm, which is big enough to fit several Earths inside.
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