Marvel Saturn in remarkable view which NASA's Voyager failed to capture in 1982

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has shared an image of Saturn which was photographed in a remarkable view that NASA’s Voyager probes failed to capture. According to ESO, the image above was taken using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) back in 2001 from a vantage point that was not possible during the Voyager encounter in 1982. 

The picture is a composite of exposures in two near-infrared wavebands and displays the intricate, banded structure of Saturn’s atmosphere and its glorious rings. Interestingly, the telescope was also able to capture Tethys, one of Saturn's Moon, as a small point of light at the bottom of the image. 

ESO further revealed that the image was obtained at a time when Saturn was close to the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere but was at a distance of 1,209 million km. "At this moment, the tilt of the rings was about as large as it can be, allowing the best possible view of the planet's South Pole", ESO's official report said. "That area was on Saturn's night side in 1982 and could therefore not be photographed during the Voyager encounter".

If you look closely, you can also mark out a dark spot, near Saturn's south pole, that measures approximately 300 km across. Besides, the bright spot close to the ringed planet's equator is the remnant of a giant storm in its atmosphere that has lasted more than 5 years. Although two decades old, this picture still offers the sharpest view of the ring system ever achieved from a ground-based observatory. 

NASA's Voyager mission

The Voyager mission saw the launch of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1977 and both the probes have reached interstellar space in nearly five decades. On August 20, Voyager 2 marked its 45th year in space whereas its twin reached the milestone on September 5. Launched a few weeks apart, Voyager 1, however, became the first man-made object to leave the heliosphere and enter interstellar space in 2012, followed by Voyager 2 in 2018. 

Currently, Voyager 1 is 23.3 billion kilometres from Earth whereas Voyager 2 is around 19.5 billion kilometres away. Both the probes were launched with the objective to photograph and study the outer solar system planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune).