The Encke Gap as never before seen

This is a narrow-angle camera image of Saturn's rings taken after the successful completion of the orbit insertion burn when the spacecraft had crossed the ring plane and was looking upwards at the sunlit face of the rings.

The image shows details in the Encke Gap (325 kilometres) in Saturn's A ring. The centre of the gap lies at a distance of 133 600 kilometres from Saturn. The image shows a ring in the centre of the gap.

The wavy inner edge of the gap and the wake-like structures emanating from its inner edge are caused by the tiny moon Pan that orbits in the middle of the gap. Two fainter ring features are also visible in the gap region.

Cassini-Huygens was approximately 195 000 kilometres above the ring plane when the image was obtained. Image scale is approximately 1 kilometre per pixel.