Saturn's Rings and Moons

Stunning views of Saturn's rings and its moons, highlighting interactions between celestial bodies in a dark cosmic environment.

Saturn's A Ring and Moon Atlas

New Rings for Cassini's Division

Saturn's B rings

A trio of large storms embraces in Saturn's high north. The three prominent vortices seen here are each wide enough to span the distance from New York City to Denver, or from London to Moscow

Icy Traveler

Janus in View

This oblique view of Saturn shows what may be localized upwellings in the clouds of Saturn's southern hemisphere. Although the contrast is low, a vortex is visible near lower right.This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings

Two moons orbit serenely before Saturn while large storms churn through the planet's southern hemisphere in this image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The moon Mimas is on the right. Dione is on the left.

A small crescent of the moon Rhea is dwarfed by the larger crescent of Saturn in this image captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Rhea can be seen in the upper right of the image.

Terrain on Saturn's moon Tethys, defined with craters, is shown in front of the hazy atmosphere of the larger moon Titan in this image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. This view looks toward the Saturn-facing sides of Titan and Tethys.

Belittled Moon

Close Look at the Pole

Outer Edge of Saturn's A-ring

Off Saturn's Shoulder

In this image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, two large craters on Tethys, near the line where day fades to night, almost resemble two giant eyes observing Saturn. Tethys is significantly closer to the camera, while the planet is in the background.

Rhea and Enceladus appear above and below the rings on the left of this image, serving to visually offset the dominance of Saturn in this image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft composition features Saturn's rings (top of image), its second largest moon, Rhea (on right of image), and one of the planet's tiny moons, Telesto (near the middle of image) appears as a bright speck.

Prometheus interacts gravitationally with the inner flanking ringlets of the F ring, creating dark channels as it passes

The rings are awash in subtle tones of gold and cream in this view which shows the outer B ring, the Cassini Division and the inner part of the A ring

Tethys' Truncated Shadow

As NASA's Cassini spacecraft continues its weekly ring-grazing orbits, diving just past the outside of Saturn's F ring, it is tracking several small, persistent objects there.

Saturn's moons, like Janus, irregularly shaped bodies, and Tethys, spherically shaped, demonstrate the main difference between small moons and large ones. It's all about the moon's shape.

Light and dark halves of Titan are visible in this Cassini image which illustrates the seasonal changes in the northern and southern hemispheres.

Crowded Sky

As Saturn's northern hemisphere summer approaches, NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured the shadows of the rings creep ever southward across the planet.

At least four distinct plumes of water ice spew out from the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus in this dramatically illuminated image. Light reflected off Saturn is illuminating the surface of the moon while the sun backlights the plumes.

A scalloped look is created in the edges of the Keeler Gap in Saturn's outer A ring as the moon Daphnis orbits in the gap.

Jupiter's Gossamer Ring

Hubble again views Saturn's Rings Edge-on

Encke Inhabitants

Help from Orion

The right-hand limb of Saturn's moon Mimas appears flattened as Herschel Crater is viewed edge-on in this image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The planet's rings are in the background.

The moon Tethys occupies the right foreground of this Saturnian scene. This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks toward the anti-Saturn side of Tethys and toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane.

Five images of Saturn's rings, taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft between 2009 and 2012, show clouds of material ejected from impacts of small objects into the rings.

Daphnis, one of Saturn's ring-embedded moons, is featured this view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, kicking up waves as it orbits within the Keeler gap.

Bright, high altitude clouds, like those imaged here, often appear more filamentary or streak-like than clouds imaged at slightly deeper levels in Saturn's atmosphere. This view also shows one of the many 'cat's eye' vortices.

A pair of Saturn's moons appear insignificant compared to the immensity of the planet. Enceladus is at left, Epimetheus appears as a tiny black speck on the far left in this image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks toward Saturn's tiny moon Aegaeon within the G-ring arc. The moonlet Aegaeon (formerly known as S/2008 S 1) can't be seen in this image, but it orbits in the bright arc of Saturn's faint G ring shown here.

Fresh Crater in North Polar Layered Deposit

Saturn's moons Janus and Prometheus look close enough to touch in this stunningly detailed view

The bright streaks visible in these Cassini images taken during Saturns August 2009 equinox are exciting evidence of a constant rain of interplanetary projectiles onto the planets rings.

Wrinkled Crescent

Rippling with detail, the southern hemisphere of Saturn comes to life in this view from the Cassini spacecraft. Long, flowing streamers and bands of great contrast soften toward the pole, where a great hurricane-like storm resides

Saturn's second largest moon Rhea pops in and out of view behind the planet's rings in this image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which includes the smaller moon Epimetheus.

Golf Ball breaking Pane of Glass against Black Background

NASA's Voyager 2 acquired this high-resolution image of the epsilon ring of Uranus on Jan. 23, 1986. This clear-filter image from Voyager's narrow-angle camera has a resolution of about 10 km (6 mi).

The bright arc within Saturn's G ring is shown truncated by the shadow of the planet at the bottom of this image captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Titan's Halo

Saturn

Waves and Small Particles in Ring A

Mimas and the Giant

Saturn's small moon Pan, brightly overexposed, casts a short shadow on the A ring in this image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft before the planet's August 2009 equinox.

Saturn's small moon Pan casts a long shadow across the A ring in this image captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft a few days after the planet's August 2009 equinox.

NASA's Cassini orbiter shows that Enceladus (visible in the lower-left corner of the image) is but a speck before enormous Saturn, but even a small moon can generate big waves of excitement throughout the scientific community.

Saturn's small moon Prometheus, slightly overexposed in this image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shows off its potato-like shape as it orbits in the Roche Division between the A ring and thin F ring.

Rounding the Corner

Hiding Dione

The Smog-bound Moon

NASA's Cassini spacecraft catches Saturn's moon Daphnis making waves and casting shadows from the narrow Keeler Gap of the planet's A ring in this view taken around the time of Saturn's August 2009 equinox.

Saturn's north polar hexagon basks in the Sun's light now that spring has come to the northern hemisphere. Many smaller storms dot the north polar region and Saturn's signature rings put in an appearance in the background.

The Cassini spacecraft captures the ripples, loops and storms that swirl in Saturn's east-west flowing cloud bands

$The low angle of sunlight along the slim crescent of Saturn's moon Enceladus (313 miles or 504 kilometers across) highlights the many fractures and furrows on its icy surface. This view looks toward the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Enceladus, which is dimly illuminated in the image above by sunlight reflected off Saturn. North on Enceladus is up and rotated 14 degrees to the left. The image was taken in visible light with NASA's Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 26, 2016. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 104,000 miles (168,000 kilometers) from Enceladus. Image scale is 3,303 feet (1 kilometer) per pixel.$

Saturn's A ring displays a marked asymmetry in brightness between the region nearer to the Cassini spacecraft and the region farther from it. The A ring is the broad, bright section of the rings outside of the dark B ring

Small Particles in Saturn's Rings

Rings Against a Dark Planet

Saturn's largest and second largest moons, Titan and Rhea, appear to be stacked on top of each other in this true-color scene from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Arc in the Tenuous G Ring

Saturn's F ring shows several 'mini-jets' near the upper-right of this image captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The A ring also appears in the lower-left of the image.

NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft snapped a series of images as it approached Venus on June 5. The planet is enshrouded by a global layer of clouds that obscures its surface to the MESSENGER Dual Imaging System (MDIS) cameras.

This image from a movie captured by NASA'S Cassini spacecraft shows a south polar vortex, or shows a south polar vortex, or a swirling mass of gas around the pole in the atmosphere, at Saturn's moon Titan.

Two sets of laser pulses transmitted from Earth to a spacecraft over a distance of 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles) in a communications experiment are shown in this long-exposure image made by NASAs Galileo spacecraft's imaging system.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captures a rare family photo of three of Saturn's moons that couldn't be more different from each other. Shown here are Tethys (center), Hyperion (upper left), and Prometheus (lower left).

Sun-Drenched Rhea

South Pole as viewed by Mariner 9 on Mars Approach

This MOC image shows layers exposed in a trough in the martian north polar region. At the time the picture was acquired, the entire scene was covered by seasonal carbon dioxide frost

These mosaics (6 frames each) show the appearance of the Great Red Spot in infrared light obtained on June 26, 1996 by the Solid State Imaging system on board NASA's Galileo spacecraft.

NASA's Voyager 2 returned this picture of the Uranus rings on Jan. 22, 1986, from a distance of 2.52 million kilometers (1.56 million miles). All nine known rings are visible in this image.

This mosaic of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter from NASA's Galileo orbiter was taken over a 75 second interval beginning at universal time 4 hours, 18 minutes, 8 seconds on June 26, 1996.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft examines Titan's dark and light seasonal hemispheric dichotomy as it images the moon with a filter sensitive to near-infrared light. This image also shows Titan's north polar hood.

The Cassini spacecraft returns a grand and unique vista of Saturn's horizon, reminiscent of the views of our own planet from Earth orbit

Jupiter's Equatorial Region in a Methane Band (Time Set 1)

Sunlight scattering through the periphery of Titan's atmosphere reaches NASA's Cassini as the spacecraft's camera is pointed at the dark side of the moon.

The mosaic of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter from NASA's Galileo orbiter was taken over a 76 second interval beginning at universal time 14 hours, 33 minutes, 22 seconds, on June 26, 1996.

This Cassini spacecraft view shows the interesting north-south asymmetry in Titan's atmosphere, which is thought to be a seasonal effect

Image of Saturn's F-ring

In this stunning image, NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks at the dark side of Saturn's largest moon. The narrowing circle of light surrounding Titan is produced by sunlight scattering through Titan's atmosphere.

Saturn's rings and small moon Prometheus obscure NASA's Cassini spacecraft's view of the planet's second largest moon, Rhea. Prometheus can be seen just below the center of the image, in front of Rhea.

A close-up of the F ring shows dark gores in its interior faint ringlets following the passage of Prometheus. Each gore represents a single interaction of the moon with the F ring material

Titan, Saturn's largest moon and Mimas in the foreground are seen together in this view from Cassini. Titan's gravity is weaker than Earth's, so the moon's atmosphere is quite extended -- a quality hinted at in this view

The rapidly rotating clouds above Titan's northernmost latitudes stretch into streaks that circumscribe the pole. The ultraviolet spectral filter used to take this image allows the Cassini spacecraft to view the moon's stratosphere

Outer edge of Saturn's B-ring

The area within Saturn's north polar hexagon is shown by NASA's Cassini spacecraft to contain myriad storms of various sizes, not the least of which is the remarkable and imposing vortex situated over the planet's north pole.

Close-up of Saturn's Rings Seen by Cassini

Violet Titan

Banded Moon

This collage of images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows Saturn's northern hemisphere and rings as viewed with four different spectral filters; each is sensitive to different wavelengths of light and reveals clouds and hazes at different altitudes.

G Ring, Brightened by Time

Just a Phase

This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows a wave structure in Saturn's rings known as the Janus 2 1 spiral density wave. Resulting from the same process that creates spiral galaxies, spiral density waves in Saturn's rings are much more tightly wound. In this case, every second wave crest is actually the same spiral arm which has encircled the entire planet multiple times. This is the only major density wave visible in Saturn's B ring. Most of the B ring is characterized by structures that dominate the areas where density waves might otherwise occur, but this innermost portion of the B ring is different. The radius from Saturn at which the wave originates (toward lower-right in this image) is 59,796 miles (96,233 kilometers) from the planet. At this location, ring particles orbit Saturn twice for every time the moon Janus orbits once, creating an orbital resonance. The wave propagates outward from the resonance (and away from Saturn), toward upper-left in this view. For reasons res

This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows Cassini's best image of the propeller feature known informally as Bleriot. Bleriot is the largest of the propellers in Saturn's rings.

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