Rare Look at Saturn and Earth Around the Corner: How to Participate

Come July 19, one of the most heralded Cassini space craft events of the year will take place, according to researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, when the planet and its famous rings will be backlit by the Sun.

With Saturn covering the Sun's intense rays, not only will scientists be gathering unique information on the planet, but they will also get a chance to catch a glimpse of Earth from Saturn's point of view - a glimpse they will be sharing with the masses.

The main science goal during the event is that of constructing a mosaic of the Saturn system to look at the more diffuse rings encircling the planet and checking for change over a period of time.

A previous mosaic of the Saturn system Cassini made in 2006 revealed that the dusty E ring, which subsists off of the water-ice plume of the moon Enceladus, featured unexpectedly large variations in brightness and color around its orbit.

What scientists want to see this time is how that looks seven Earth years and a Saturnian season later. This, in turn, will offer clues to the forces at work in the planet's system.

Researchers will do this by collecting data from their visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, composite infrared mapping spectrometer and ultraviolet imaging spectrograph in addition to the imaging cameras.

With everything to do, however, the people over at NASA are still determined to have a little fun with the event: called the Cassini portrait session, NASA officials are inviting the world's inhabitants to take 15 minutes starting at 2:27 p.m. PDT to go outside and wave.

To promote the event, a Facebook page, twitter hashtag #waveatsaturn and Flickr group have all been developed.

Furthermore, because Saturn will appear bright in the night sky on July 19 and 20, officials are inviting individuals to take a picture of the planet and send it in for a special collage combining everyone's images.

Once complete, the photo of Earth will mark the third taken from the outer solar system.The first and most distant one was taken 23 years ago by NASA's Voyager 1 at 4 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) away and the second by Cassini in 2006 from 926 million miles (1.49 billion kilometers).

This year's image will be taken from a total of 898 million miles (1.44 biliion kilometers) away.