NASA Cassini orbiter mission photo of Titan from June 29, 2007, processed by Aster Cowart.
this was a fun photo to find and work with in nasa's image archives, and a wonderful showcase for some of the artistic potential present in science data.
this photo was taken while titan was nearly in between the sun and the cassini probe. they regularly took images with this celestial geometry because titan's atmosphere refracts sunlight and highlights vertical changes in titan's atmospheric structure. but this type of observation also places the sun very close to the edge of the camera's field of view. because this light is so bright the lens' internal baffles don't completely block the light, so you get all sorts of neat reflections and diffraction effects superimposed on the image. in this case they frame titan very symmetrically. these are probably very unfortunately placed for science return (calibrating out stray light to get a radiance value suuuuuucks) but it is very pretty.
it's part of the reason i encourage people to go diving in the planetary archives, there's so much hidden treasure hiding there!
