Here is an improved 4K resolution texture for the rings of Saturn. This texture is intended for use with Celestia v1.3.2pre6 or later.
If you put this image file into Celestia's hires folder, you can use the "R" command to see it. "r" will display the lores version.
Your graphic card's texture buffer must be 4K or larger to use this texture. Celestia will not scale it down for you. Check Celestia's "Help" menu for the OpenGL information about your card.
The opacities of the rings in this texture image were derived from the measurements taken at several observatories of the occultation of the star 28 Sgr in July, 1989. See http://ringmaster.arc.nasa.gov/ringocc/ringocc.html for the details of those measurements.
The colors of the rings are now part of the image and are based on Voyager information and Hubble and Cassini images. They were updated on 7 July 2004 with sampled color and shading from higher resolution Cassini images of the B ring, producing finer detail in that region.
This Web page is maintained by Selden Ball
at Wilson Lab.
Please send any comments or corrections to
seb@lepp.cornell.edu