The spacecraft saw the rings from a high-inclination vantage point

Jan 21, 2014 15:34 GMT  ·  By

Scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who manage the Cassini spacecraft currently in orbit around Saturn, have just released a new image of the massive ring system encircling the gas giant. The photo was collected at infrared wavelengths, the team explains. 

Photos such as this one are very important to astronomers because they can contribute extensively to our understanding of how these massive ice and dust rings developed and evolved. Cassini has until now captured hundreds of images of these rings, from numerous angles.

What astronomers are truly interested in is discovering the nature and origins of ice particles making up the rings. Some of these particles are released by moons such as Enceladus, which fuels Saturn's E Ring, but other rings may have sources of material that researchers do not yet know.

Cassini snapped this new image of the ring system from its location 19 degrees above the planetary plane, and from a distance of 1.1 million kilometers (712,000 miles) from the gas giant. The filters scientists used allowed single-polarization light to pass through to the detector at a wavelength of 705 nanometers.