The Cassini team got this stunning false color image of Saturn’s rings using a technique called “stellar occultation.” In simple terms, they pointed one of the spacecraft’s instruments through the rings at a star. The flickering of the starlight as the rings passed in front of it was converted into the ring density depicted in this image.
Bright areas indicate the denser regions of the rings. The bright bands in the left part of the image are “peaks” caused by gravitational stirring of the rings by Saturn’s moon, Janus. A smaller density wave in the right half of the image is produced by the moon Pandora. The image represents a distance of about 450 miles, and the smallest features are about one-half mile across.Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Colorado at Boulder More Cassini Images | Cassini Main Page