SATURNA CASSINI EXPLORER

THE DATA EXPLORER

Read between the rings.

Rev 044 Egress · X-band · DSN 63. 292,408 converted source records from RSS_2007_130_X63_E_DLP_500M.TAB.

Opening the observation…

Read this observation’s fields, provenance and limits →

Public data & provenance

Six Cassini RSS observations

Inspect 1,566,902 converted source records from six NASA PDS Cassini Radio Science Subsystem diffraction-limited profiles. Read the product details, then open a radial window in the explorer.

Complete archived profile products in this website
ObservationSource recordsRing radius (km)
Rev 007 Egress · X-band · DSN 43RSS_2005_123_X43_E_DLP_500M.TAB290,37772,422.5–145,016.5
Rev 028 Ingress · X-band · DSN 43RSS_2006_258_X43_I_DLP_500M.TAB104,644114,970.25–141,131
Rev 044 Egress · X-band · DSN 63RSS_2007_130_X63_E_DLP_500M.TAB292,40871,978.75–145,080.5
Rev 064 Egress · X-band · DSN 43RSS_2008_102_X43_E_DLP_500M.TAB293,12471,931.75–145,212.5
Rev 123 Egress · X-band · DSN 63RSS_2009_360_X63_E_DLP_500M.TAB292,81971,841.5–145,046
Rev 133 Egress · X-band · DSN 43RSS_2010_170_X43_E_DLP_500M.TAB293,53071,737.75–145,120

Optical depth and normalized signal power are dimensionless; phase shift is in degrees. Ring radius is measured from Saturn’s center. The 0.25 km sample spacing is not a claim about reconstructed resolution.

Wide views are display reductions. Narrow windows use exact converted Float64 samples with SHA-256 verification. Missing and negative values are preserved; phase is not unwrapped. These archived profiles retain diffraction effects and are separate from the team’s synthetic and scalar-model benchmarks.

Original NASA PDS collection ↗ · Read the research and its limits

MIT PRIMES 2026 · Saturn’s ringsBuilt for curiosity.

Sources & credits

Follow the source.

Cassini sent radio signals through Saturn’s rings toward Earth. Changes in those signals reveal structure across the rings.

Explore six archived observations here, compare exact samples, and keep a record of what you notice.

MIT PRIMES 2026

New Methods toward High-Resolution Reconstruction of Saturn’s Rings

Dell Li · Maiya Qiu · Yutong Zhao
Mentored by Dr. Ryan Maguire

What am I looking at?

These are Cassini RSS diffraction-limited ring profiles from NASA’s Planetary Data System. The three measured variables are normal optical depth, normalized signal power, and phase shift.

Wide views are reduced overviews. Narrow windows load the exact converted source records and verify their hashes. Optical depth is not a direct measure of ring mass; a pattern alone does not establish its physical cause. Missing and negative values are preserved.

Explore the team’s project research
Original Cassini data ↗Website source code ↗New to research? Start here ↗

Project research presents methods and reported results from the team’s working manuscript. The explorer displays archived observations; the method benchmarks are separate synthetic and scalar-model experiments. The full manuscript and scientific solver are not hosted here.

Background: an artistic rendering of Saturn.