Spring doesn't just happen just nearly Earth. Spring furthermore happens not far off from some of our adjoining planets in the solar system.

Of the countless equinoxes Saturn has seen before the birth of the solar system, this one, captured here in a mosaic of well-ventilated and dark, is the first seen occurring close by an emissary from Earth none late buildup than our loyal robotic explorer, Cassini in this image from 2009.

Seen from our planet, the view of Saturn's rings during equinox is foreshortened and limited. But in orbit on Saturn, Cassini had no such problems. From 20 degrees above the showground plane, Cassini's broad angle camera shot 75 exposures in taking again for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings, and a few of its moons a day and a half after alter Saturn equinox, behind the sun's disk was exactly overhead at the planet's equator.

At equinox, the shadows of the planet's broad rings are compressed into a single, narrow band cast onto the planet as seen in this mosaic. At this mature thus near to equinox, illumination of the rings by sunlight reflected off the planet dominates any meager sunlight falling more or less the rings. Hence, the half of the rings on the left illuminated by planet shine is, since dealing out, much brighter than the half of the rings roughly the right. On the right, it is abandoned the lengthy parts of the rings that catch any substantial sunlight.

With no ornamentation, the rings would be invisible in this mosaic. To put in their visibility, the dark (right) half of the rings has been brightened relative to the brighter (left) half by a factor of three, and subsequently the associated arena system has been brightened by a factor of 20 relative to the planet. So the dark half of the rings is 60 era brighter, and the environment unwell half 20 become primordial brighter, than they would have appeared if every one of system, planet included, could have been captured in a single image.

This view looks toward the northern side of the rings from roughly 20 degrees above the field plane.

The images were taken upon Aug. 12, 2009, arrival approximately 1.25 days after truthful equinox, using the red, green and blue spectral filters of the wide angle camera and were join to make this natural color view. The images were obtained at a distance of re 847,000 kilometers (526,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 74 degrees. Image scale is 50 kilometers (31 miles) per pixel