Saturn and Tethys, in color

Eye candy is a great way to start the day. I spotted the images necessary to make this mosaic on the new-and-improved Cassini raw images website last week but after struggling for a little while to assemble even a couple of them into a coherent picture with sensible-looking color, I gave up. Fortunately there are others on the Internet who are more persistent than I; in this case it's Ian Regan who rose to the challenge and created this really lovely view of Saturn and its rings at low phase, with Tethys peeking over the edge of the image at left. Pretty! It's kind of enthralling to watch the slow, inexorable march of the advancing seasons on Saturn, using the shadow cast by its rings on its globe as a sort of a season sundial.