Sunlight Through Saturn's Rings
Normally,
earth-bound astronomers view
Saturn's spectacular ring system
fully illuminated by reflected sunlight.
However,
this
intriguing picture
was made to take advantage of an
unusual orientation,
with the Sun actually illuminating the rings from below.
The three bright
ring features
are visible because the rings themselves are not solid.
Composed of many separate chunks of
rocky, icy material, the rings
allow the scattered sunlight to pass through them --
offering
a dramatic demonstration that they are not continuous,
uninterrupted bands of material.
The
picture is a false-color composite based on Hubble
Space Telescope images recorded in November of 1995.