Pan's Short Shadow

The small moon Pan casts a short shadow on Saturn's A ring in this image taken as the planet approached its August 2009 equinox.Pan (28 kilometers, 17 miles across) orbits in the Encke Gap of the A ring. The novel illumination geometry that accompanies equinox lowers the sun's angle to the ringplane, significantly darkens the rings, and causes out-of-plane structures to look anomalously bright