NASA's Cassini spies bright Venus from Saturn orbit

The Earth's twin planet, Venus shines like a bright beacon in images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which is spying the bright, cloudy terrestrial planet from Saturn orbit.

The Earth's twin planet, Venus shines like a bright beacon in images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which is spying the bright, cloudy terrestrial planet from Saturn orbit.

Last November Cassini took a special image of Venus and Saturn when it was placed in the shadow of Saturn. This allowed Cassini to look in the direction of the Sun and Venus, and take a backlit image of Saturn and its rings in a special viewing geometry called 'high solar phase.'

This observing position reveals details about the rings and Saturn's atmosphere that cannot be seen in lower solar phase. One of the Venus and Saturn images being released now is a combination of separate red, green and blue images covering the planet and main rings and processed to produce true colour. Last December, a false-color version of the mosaic was released.

Another image, taken in January, captures Venus just beyond the limb of Saturn and in close proximity to Saturn's G ring, a thin ring just beyond the main Saturnian rings. The diffuse E ring, which is outside of the G ring and created by the spray of the moon Enceladus, also is visible. Venus is, along with Mercury, Earth, and Mars, one of the rocky terrestrial planets in the solar system that orbit relatively close to the Sun.