Question on Cassini Image

First off, let me say I am not being a conspiracy theorist, I really am
interested in what this photo shows:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ca...dia/soi-7.html

1. Is the thin ring, the F ring? and if so OMIGOD the gap between the F ring
and the rest of the rings is HUGE!
2. What are the streaks on the photo? They look like earth based meteor
images, but they are all going in different directions.

BV.

"Benign Vanilla" wrote in message
...
First off, let me say I am not being a conspiracy theorist, I really am
interested in what this photo shows:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ca...dia/soi-7.html

1. Is the thin ring, the F ring? and if so OMIGOD the gap between the F
ring
and the rest of the rings is HUGE!
2. What are the streaks on the photo? They look like earth based meteor
images, but they are all going in different directions.

One more quick observation...

It seems like in the lower left corner of the image there is a body just
inside the ring that is maybe a 1/3 crescent. Just my imagination?

BV.

"Benign Vanilla" wrote in message
...
First off, let me say I am not being a conspiracy theorist, I really am
interested in what this photo shows:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ca...dia/soi-7.html

1. Is the thin ring, the F ring? and if so OMIGOD the gap between the F
ring
and the rest of the rings is HUGE!
2. What are the streaks on the photo? They look like earth based meteor
images, but they are all going in different directions.

One more quick observation...

It seems like in the lower left corner of the image there is a body just
inside the ring that is maybe a 1/3 crescent. Just my imagination?

BV.

"Benign Vanilla" wrote in message
...
First off, let me say I am not being a conspiracy theorist, I really am
interested in what this photo shows:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ca...dia/soi-7.html

1. Is the thin ring, the F ring? and if so OMIGOD the gap between the F
ring
and the rest of the rings is HUGE!

Yes, it's the F ring imaged through the wide angle camera. There are a
couple of narrow angle camera images that show the ring in even more detail.
IIRC, the narrow angle camera has 10x smaller field of view and equally
larger resolution.

2. What are the streaks on the photo? They look like earth based meteor
images, but they are all going in different directions.

They are cosmic ray hits on the CCD image detector. Sometimes the particle
comes in from the side resulting in streaks like this. Most of the hits
produce dot-like noise in the image as can also be seen. You can see things
like these all the time in images returned by the SOHO spacecraft.

--
The butler did it.

"Benign Vanilla" wrote in message
...
First off, let me say I am not being a conspiracy theorist, I really am
interested in what this photo shows:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ca...dia/soi-7.html

1. Is the thin ring, the F ring? and if so OMIGOD the gap between the F
ring
and the rest of the rings is HUGE!

Yes, it's the F ring imaged through the wide angle camera. There are a
couple of narrow angle camera images that show the ring in even more detail.
IIRC, the narrow angle camera has 10x smaller field of view and equally
larger resolution.

2. What are the streaks on the photo? They look like earth based meteor
images, but they are all going in different directions.

They are cosmic ray hits on the CCD image detector. Sometimes the particle
comes in from the side resulting in streaks like this. Most of the hits
produce dot-like noise in the image as can also be seen. You can see things
like these all the time in images returned by the SOHO spacecraft.

--
The butler did it.