Pioneer 11 approaches Saturn

Filed under pretty pictures, global views, amateur image processing, Saturn, Saturn's rings, Pioneer 10 and 11

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On approach to Saturn on September 1, 1979, Pioneer 11 gazed on the unlit northern face of the rings. Cassini viewed Saturn at similar season in early February 2009.

NASA / Data from NASA Ames / processing © Ted Stryk, Roane State CC

Copyright holder: Ted Stryk

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about September 1, 1979

Comments:

Skip: 04/05/2013 12:17 CDT

Beautiful! I was wondering, could a rocky planet have rings? Or is there something unique about gas planets that enables them to have rings? I wonder what the rings would look like from the surface of the mother planet.

DanManX: 04/05/2013 01:16 CDT

As far as I'm aware, it's more about the mass of material in orbit around the planet that determines rings. Saturn, Uranus and Jupiter have a lot of moons and other material, which is pulled by the planet's gravity into the ring pattern (and usually "shepherded" by the moons to keep a certain shape and pattern). I believe one of the goals of New Horizons is to search for possible (very faint) rings around Pluto, so it must be possible, just rare.