are these points of light saturn ring's components?

Before the casinni's arrival to saturn I was wondering if it could be possible to take photographs of the small ateroid like objects that compose its rings. Then, today I was reading nasa's saturn page when I found this image:



www.nasa.gov...

Do you think that at least some of the points of light that can be seen at the sides of the ring are indeed pieces of it? or the're just stars? If it is so, why the're no stars on other cassini photos?


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there's a place called tomorrow, full of joy, not of sorrow

Not sure what those dots could be. They could be particles floating near around the belts, could also be noise on the camera and it could be stars. If they are stars. My guess as to why we can see them is because we're only looking at a small part of the ring and perhaps a longer exposure was needed to take the pic. When taking a photo of all of Saturn, that's a lot of reflected light, so one doesn't need a long exposure. There wouldn't be enough time for the stars to get exposed onto the image sensor.

But i'm really not sure what the dots are for sure.

If you look at all of the photos, some dots are in exactly the same place. Some stars? probably. Some ring components? probably. Some just dots on the film? definitely.

Cant wait till we get a picture of some oddly shaped mountain and the 'life on Titan!' threads start..