In the Shadow of Saturn
In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.The Space Store is an online store offering fine quality space products from our on-line discount store. Shop our store to buy NASA gifts, SpaceX Products, Space Shuttle collectibles, International Space Station and Apollo space program products. Buy astronaut autographs, space and NASA memorabilia and collectibles, space toys, rockets, astronaut dolls, space LEGO toys, and astronaut costumes. We sell NASA flight suits, space shuttle flight jackets, NASA mission patches and mission insignia pins. Shop us for Fisher space pens, meteorite jewelry and astronomy toys.