In the Shadow of Saturn

影像提供: SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA
Explanation:
     In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.
說明:
      在土星的暗影內，出現了預料之外的奇景。正在繞行土星 無人駕駛的卡西尼號太空船，最近在這顆巨行星的暗影內飛行了12個小時，當它回頭眺望被遮掩的太陽時，見到了非常奇特的景觀。首先，土星的夜面在壯麗行星環所反射的陽光之照耀下，顯得半明半暗。此外，在上面這幅對比經過大幅誇大的彩色影像裡，橫劃過土星盤面的環系看似黝黑的剪影，但較遠離土星的部份，則因散射陽光而顯得非常明亮。土星的環系變得如此光亮，讓天文學家能發現新的行星環，不過在上面影像裡它們很難被辨識。上面影像中最外圍的土星E環更是格外清晰，它是由土衛二最近剛發現的冰噴泉所產生的。在遙遠的遠方，影像左側稍高於明亮主環的地方有個小亮點，它就是幾乎被忽視的淡藍色地球。
p.s. 此圖又為近期 National Geographic 雜誌的封面。
資料來源: Scientific American
                 Department of Physics, NCKU

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