NASA's Cassini Captures Stunning Backlit View of Saturn

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured a spectacular backlit view of the planet Saturn and its rings.

Cassini was positioned within Saturn's shadow during its 174th orbit on Oct.17, 2012. It was the best location to look in the direction of the sun and take images of the dark side of the planet as well as the backlit view of the rings, according to a NASA report.

Taking a look in the direction of the sun is a geometry referred as "high solar phase" by scientists. The position at which the spacecraft was placed helped in getting details about the rings and the planet's atmosphere which cannot be seen in the lower solar phase.

This is the second such image taken by Cassini, the first one being taken in 2006. During that time, Cassini was positioned at a distance and the mosaic captured by the spacecraft was processed in natural color. It was titled "In Saturn's Shadow", in which our planet Earth made a special appearance. This image is one of the most popular images taken by Cassini.

But the new mosaic processed by Cassini has 60 images (click here to find images) taken in violet, visible and near the infrared part of the spectrum. Unlike the 2006 image, the Earth does not make any appearance and is actually hidden behind Saturn. The image was taken when Cassini was close to Saturn, showing more details of the planet's rings than the 2006 image.

"Of all the many glorious images we have received from Saturn, none are more strikingly unusual than those taken from Saturn's shadow," Carolyn Porco, Cassini's imaging team lead based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo, said in a statement.

Cassini was launched in 1997 and has been orbiting Saturn since 2004 to study the planet and its domain, as part of a cooperative project led by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

Ever since it began orbiting the planet, Cassini has made some interesting discoveries. For example, the spacecraft recently spotted a long river valley on Saturn's moon Titan that resembles a miniature version of the Earth's Nile River in Egypt.