Stunning video of a dive through Saturn’s rings

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft went diving into Saturn’s rings – and the movie it made is turning heads.

Using a dish-shaped antenna as a shield during the perilous journey on April 26, Cassini made the first-ever dive through the 1,200-mile gap between the planet and its rings.

Scientists were amazed that the spacecraft only encountered a few dust particles on its way, Fox News reported.

“The region between the rings and Saturn is ‘the big empty,’ apparently,” said Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

“Cassini will stay the course, while the scientists work on the mystery of why the dust level is much lower than expected,” he said.

The footage captured an hour’s worth of observations as the spacecraft swooped over Saturn during the first of its so-called “Grand Finale” dives.

It begins with a view of the swirling vortex at the north pole before heading past the outer boundary of the hexagon-shaped jet stream, according to NASA.

“I was surprised to see so many sharp edges along the hexagon’s outer boundary and the eye-wall of the polar vortex,” said Kunio Sayanagi, an associate of the Cassini imaging team based at Hampton University in Virginia, who helped produce the new movie.

“Something must be keeping different latitudes from mixing to maintain those edges,” he said.

As the individual movie frames were captured, the spacecraft’s altitude above the clouds dropped from 45,000 to 4,200 miles. During this time, the smallest resolvable features in the atmosphere changed from 5.4 miles per pixel to 0.5 mile per pixel.

“The images from the first pass were great, but we were conservative with the camera settings. We plan to make updates to our observations for a similar opportunity on June 28 that we think will result in even better views,” said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of the Cassini imaging team based at Caltech in Pasadena.

Cassini went on its last dive on Tuesday and is scheduled to make a total of 22.

It has generated a wealth of scientific data on Saturn and its moons during its mission. Last month, for example, NASA announced that its moon Enceladus could support life thanks to the discovery of hydrogen.

After almost two decades in space, Cassini’s mission will end Sept. 15, when it will crash into Saturn.