Saturn

Note the bright disk of the planet with a gradual fading toward the edge, called limb darkening. This illustrates a gradual cooling outward in Saturn's atmosphere. The rings are seen in emission outside the disk but then in front of the planet they absorb the radiation from the bright disk behind, appearing as a dark band. In visual light they appear bright everywhere because they reflect the incident sunlight but at radio wavelengths the sunlight is fainter and we see the actual emission from Saturn.

Observing run - 1982 January 24-25 at the VLA Integration time - 3 hours

Legacy Astronomical Images

NRAO/AUI/NSF does not hold full copyright for this image. Contact the archivist for details.

Legacy Astronomical Image

Saturn

I. de Pater, J.R. Dickel

Very Large Array (VLA)

1982-01-25

continuum

U

2.0 cm

15 GHz

RA 25:0:0.000, Dec: 0:0:0.000 (J2000)

Contact the archivist for a high resolution tif of this image.

Solar System Series

Planets Unit