Cassini Picture showing Saturn's Shadow?

[mantiss]

Is this the case? A Cassini Picture showing Saturn's Shadow (http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/raw-images-details.cfm?feiImageID=60265)? That would be an amazing picture if it ain't an artefact of the lenses etc. I would imagine the shadow would be MUCH bigger than that, but then strange things happens sometimes while taking pictures with the sun at your back.

Thanks

[The_Radiation_Specialist]

were exactly is the shadow cast at???

[ngc3314]

Is this the case? A Cassini Picture showing Saturn's Shadow (http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/raw-images-details.cfm?feiImageID=60265)? That would be an amazing picture if it ain't an artefact of the lenses etc. I would imagine the shadow would be MUCH bigger than that, but then strange things happens sometimes while taking pictures with the sun at your back.

Thanks

That's not the planet's shadow on something - it's the characteristic scattered-light pattern of a Cassegrain telescope with four supporting vanes for the secondary mirror. Most likely, that's from Saturn not too far out of the field of view, so you have to correct it to see the faint E-ring they were pointed at. I've spent hours taking such reflections ("pupil images") out of wide-field CCD images, and similar things happen in Hubble images if they were taken looking near the Earth horizon. This also shows up in some Cassini images labelled SKY, which may be taken deliberately to measure it.

[mantiss]

Thanks for the explanation. I knew something impossible was at play, there was just no way the shadow could look this small at E ring distance, but the images displayed was disconcerting.

Thank you for the explanation :)