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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Cassini's first color view of Saturn

Cassini's first color view of Saturn
Cassini's first color view of Saturn Cassini took the data for this photo on 13 July 2001. At the time, Cassini's narrow-angle camera images were affected by a "haze anomaly" that made a large blurry halo appear around Saturn; this image has been corrected for that halo. Saturn was more than 500 million kilometers from Cassini at the time. NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / Emily Lakdawalla

Images taken through infrared, green, and blue filters were combined to make this color image, since no red filter was available. The resulting image was blurred and the blurred version subtracted from the original. This removed much of the halo but also darkened the image, so the image was brightened and color adjusted.