SATURN From the Top Down

摘要

This spectacular vista, shot by the Cassini spacecraft, shows Saturn's northern hemisphere and its rings from a top-down perspective, a view impossible from Earth. The picture is a combination of a dozen image footprints taken on Oct. 10, during the partial government shutdown that forced most NASA employees off the job. But Cassini, obeying only the laws of physics and its programming, kept snapping photos and relaying them to a Jet Propulsion Laboratory website. Gordan Ugarkovic, a software developer in Croatia, knew where to find them.