Earth from Saturn

Posted by jns on 17 January 2007

This is a most unusual, beautiful, and evocative photograph — and it is an actual photographic image, albeit a composite. The photographer was the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft. On this occasion Saturn interposed itself between the Sun and the spacecraft, thus creating this beautifully backlit composition. Although it is hard to make out in this small version, the dot in the upper-left quadrant of the lower image, indicated by the text, is the Earth, seen through Saturn’s rings.

This version of what is sure to become a famous image came to my attention through NASA’s Earth Observatory website. Visit the original page (“A View of Earth from Saturn“) for larger versions of the image, and lots of information about the image and the Cassini-Huygens mission.

Here is a short excerpt from that page:

This beautiful image of Saturn and its rings looks more like an artist’s creation than a real image, but in fact, the image is a composite (layered image) made from 165 images taken by the wide-angle camera on the Cassini spacecraft over nearly three hours on September 15, 2006. Scientists created the color in the image by digitally compositing ultraviolet, infrared, and clear-filter images and then adjusting the final image to resemble natural color. (A clear filter is one that allows in all the wavelengths of light the sensor is capable of detecting.) The bottom image is a closeup view of the upper left quadrant of the rings, through which Earth is visible in the far, far distance.