Voyager 1's departure shot of Saturn

Filed under best of, pretty pictures, global views, amateur image processing, Saturn, Saturn's rings, Voyager 1 and 2

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Saturn was Voyager 1's last planetary encounter. It captured this iconic image of the ringed giant as it left the Saturn system at 21:15 UTC on December 15, 1980.

NASA / JPL / color composite by Gordan Ugarkovic

Unlike its twin Voyager 2's departing view, Voyager 1 looked down onto the lit side of the rings; but since Saturn had just passed through its equinox, the Sun was not far above the ring plane, and the rings appeared dark. This is a newly reprocessed version created by Gordan Ugarkovic using green, blue, and violet filter images processed to resemble natural color.

Copyright holder: Gordan Ugarkovic

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 December 15, 1980