Saturn and the inner rings backlit by the Sun. Click for a larger version.
When the Cassini spacecraft was on the back side of Saturn, with Saturn’s shadow protecting the sensitive instruments from the harsh and potentially harmful rays of the Sun, the wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras captured a panoramic series of 323 images. 141 of those images were used to create this beautiful, natural color image of Saturn, the inner rings, seven of the Saturn’s moons and the planets Mars, Venus, and Earth. NASA named this image “The Day the Earth Smiled”.
Saturn, Mars, Venus, Earth. Click for a larger version.
You can’t see Mars, Venus, and Earth in this small, web sized image but you can see them in the full size downloadable, printable file.
Saturn and Earth cropped from Figure 2. Click for a larger version.
This is cropped from the original file. It will give you an idea of the amount of detail in the image.
You can download the original 9000 x 3500 pixel image here. At the same page you can also download the same full sized image with the planets labeled (Figure 2).
Saturn labeled, cropped from Figure 3. Click for a larger version.
There is also another version (Figure 3) with the planets, Saturn’s moons, and the rings labeled. When you download these images be sure to click on the image once to get a larger version, and then a second time to get the full sized JPEG file. To get the original image as a TIFF file (94.53MB), use the box at the upper right corner of the page.
At 300 ppi, these images print out at 11 2/3 x 30 inches in size. That makes for a nice sized panorama to put on your wall. EZPrints is my favorite lab for having quality panoramas made.
Links
“The Day the Earth Smiled” at NASA. This download page also has the story behind the making of this image.