Cassini turns its camera towards the Pleiades, a familiar star cluster often called the Seven Sisters. Actually containing much more than seven stars (look at it through binoculars some time!) the Pleiades consists of many young, hot blue stars in close arrangement approximately 440 light-years from our solar system. They can be seen easily from Earth, found in the “shoulder” of the constellation Taurus.

The Pleiades have been photographed many times by orbiting and Earth-bound telescopes, and while this image is nothing exceptional, it’s interesting to see a familiar feature in our own skies from Cassini’s point of view, orbiting Saturn 800 million miles away.

Looks…..ah………well, pretty much the same. 800 million miles doesn’t get you much closer, out there.

The Cassini orbiter uses images like this to check its camera calibration.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.