Here’s a great shot of Titan and Saturn acquired by Cassini on May 6, 2012 just after a pass by the haze-covered moon. It’s a color-composite made from images taken in Cassini’s red, green and blue color channels, and the resulting image was color adjusted a bit to appear more “Saturny”.

Cassini also made some closer passes of Titan on May 6, taking images within about 710,000 km. After recent passes of Encealdus and Dione, Cassini buzzed past Titan in preparation of a targeted flyby on May 22, after which it will head up and out out of the “moonplane” in order to get a better view of Saturn’s rings and upper latitudes.

After that Cassini won’t be playing amongst the moons again for three years, so images like this will be a rarity for a while.

It’s amazing to think that once images like this had to be created by artists. Now the artist is a spacecraft, and the views are real!

 See more here.

Image: NASA/JPL/SSI. Edited by J. Major.