(via hostelcolonial)

unknownskywalker:

Saturn’s Crescent at Equinox

The Cassini spacecraft looks down and pictures Saturn wrapped in a pencil-thin shadow of the rings just days after the planet’s August 2009 equinox. The moon Epimetheus is not shown here, but it is casting a tiny shadow on the planet above the rings. The moon Enceladus is faintly visible in the far top right of the image.

The novel illumination geometry that accompanies equinox lowers the sun’s angle to the ringplane, significantly darkens the rings, and causes out-of-plane structures to look anomalously bright and cast shadows across the rings. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn’s equinox, which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years.

Source: NASA/JPL