"An experimental rendering showing the rings from within Saturn's atmosphere. The altitude above the cloud tops is roughly 140 km, and the field of view is 40 degrees. The rings appear slightly bent near the horizon due to refraction.

The refraction effect should be reasonably accurate, since I used Cassini's images of this effect as "ground truth" to verify that everything made sense. In contrast, the color and transparency of Saturn's atmosphere are only approximate. In particular, the atmosphere is probably less transparent than depicted here."


Bjorn Jonsson   © 2006
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