Stereo Saturn
Get out your
red/blue glasses and launch
yourself into this
stereo
picture of Saturn!
The picture is actually
composed from two images recorded weeks apart by the
Voyager 2 spacecraft during
its visit to the Saturnian System in August of 1981.
Traveling at about 35,000 miles per hour, the spacecraft's changing
viewpoint from one image to the next
produced this exaggerated but pleasing
stereo effect.
Saturn is
the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter.
Its spectacular ring system is so wide that it would span the
space between the Earth and Moon.
Although they look solid here,
Saturn's rings consist of individually
orbiting bits of ice and rock ranging in size from grains of sand to
barn-sized boulders.