Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day we feature a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

July 31, 1995
See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Exploring Saturn's Rings
Credit: NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Voyager Project

Explanation: By watching a star flicker and fade as it passed behind Saturn's rings, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft was able explore the ring system in amazing detail. Data produced by Voyager's instruments as the star Delta Scorpii was occulted by some of the outer rings was used to reconstruct this image which shows details almost 1000 times smaller than normally possible with Voyager's cameras.

For more information about the picture see the NASA, JPL press release .

Tomorrow's picture: Crossing the Ring Plane

We keep a chronological archive and a subject sorted archive of Astronomy Pictures of the Day.
Astronomy Picture of the Day (TM) is created and copyrighted in 1995 by Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell who are solely responsible for its content.