Stunning Photo of Saturn Backlit By the Sun


	Stunning Photo of Saturn Backlit By the Sun

Kore7

5-20-2007 11:40 PM

1618 views

tags:

saturn, rings, sun, earth, cassini, nasa, space, image, beautiful, science

Kore7 says:

With our sun behind it, Saturn carves out a majestic silhouette against the vastness of space. And the tiny speck peeking through the rings? That's us!

Click on images for full-size.

(Transmitted by the Cassini probe looking back at the Earth from a billion-mile-out vantage point. Background behind the image's creation.)

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5-21-2007 4:06 AM

cementedminds

Oh my word! Beautiful!

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/0cc7e515-9a3b-4cd3-bde3-29a9127b383f/1BE76529-D99A-4D16-AB3C-915854C5C956/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge210.html" href="http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge210.html" style="font-size: 11px;">www.edge.org</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge210.html"><table background="undefined" bgcolor=""><TR valign="top"><TD height="412"><P><FONT size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><STRONG><A id="saturn" name="saturn"></A>SATURN
                 BACKLIT BY THE SUN
</STRONG><A href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/pinker.html"><STRONG>Steven
                 Pinker</STRONG></A></FONT>

<A target="new" href="http://www.edge.org/documents/images/newrings_cassini1000.gif"><IMG width="335" height="165" src="http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/images/newrings_cassini335.gif" /></A></p> <P><FONT size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">One
              of these days, <EM>Edge </EM>may want to run this photo, which
              planetary scientist <A href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/porco.html">Carolyn Porco</A>,
              leader of the Imaging Team for the Cassini mission
              to Saturn, showed us at the TED Conference: Saturn backlit
              by the sun, with the Earth appearing as a tiny dot in upper
              left (shown in the inset blowup). It is not only perhaps the
              most stunning photograph ever taken, but the fact that it
              has not appeared on the cover of <EM>Time</EM>, <EM>New
                York Times</EM>, etc., is a sign of our culture's indifference
              to science. This is truly awe-inspiring — not just visually
              beautiful, but a mind-boggling technical achievement, and
              a way to depict the finiteness and fragility of the planet
              in a way that we haven’t experienced since the famous <A target="new" href="http://www.edge.org/documents/images/apollo17_earth1000.gif">"Earthrise" photo</A> from
              the Apollo program in the late 1960s. — Steve Pinker
</FONT>
<A target="new" href="http://www.edge.org/documents/images/earth2_cassini800.gif"><IMG width="335" height="251" src="http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/images/earth2_cassini335.gif" /></A></P></TD></TR></table></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/1BE76529-D99A-4D16-AB3C-915854C5C956/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>