NASA has released two striking images of Venus as seen from the planet Saturn.
When NASA's Cassini spacecraft took the first photo, featuring the planet as a bright dot through Saturn's rings, it was about 498,000 miles from Saturn and about 880 million miles from Venus. The images were taken from a vantage point just below the ring plane, peering toward the rings' unlit side. Every pixel in the image corresponds to about 28 miles. The image was taken on Nov. 10, 2012.
Cassini captured the other image on Jan. 4, 2013. At that time it was about 371,000 miles from Saturn and 850 million miles from Venus. In this image Venus appears as a bright dot between Saturn's limb and its G ring. The image features 20 miles per pixel.
Along with Mercury, Earth and Mars, Venus is one of the rocky "terrestrial" planets in our solar system that are located comparatively close to the sun. Venus is considered Earth's "twin planet," despite an atmosphere of carbon dioxide, a temperature of almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit and having 100 times Earth's surface pressure. It is cloaked in sulfuric acid clouds, which gives it a bright appearance. It is similar to Earth in terms of its size, mass, rocky surface and close orbit.
Cassini has taken images from Saturn's vantage point before. The spacecraft took an amazing picture of Earth in 2006. Called "In Saturn's Shadow," it is one of Cassini's most popular images.
The Cassini mission involves NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. It is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Scientists from the U.S., England, France and Germany make up the imaging team and the imaging operations center is located at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
(Edited by Lois Heyman)
