9:20pm
5th December 2011
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Pan’s Very Own Shadow
In the center of this image, the shadow of Pan is a short streak thrown over the edge of the A ring where Pan travels its path through the Encke Gap.
One of the happy results of Saturn’s 29-year revolution around the sun is the changing elevation of the sun seen from the planet, and the changing elevation of the shadows of the rings and moons that the sun’s apparent motion brings.
The image was taken in visible light with NASA’s Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on 12 February 2009 from a distance of approximately 997,000 km from Pan.
