Astronomy buff Gordan Ugarkovic created a masterpiece when he combined 36 images of Saturn taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. He blended together the individual pics into a perfect composite, allowing us to gaze down on the full planet Saturn from its north pole in this spectacular composite.

The 36 images were taken by the casino spacecraft on October 10, 2013. The resulting view you see above was an enormous hit, spreading across the Internet like wildfire.

After perusing dozens of candidates, I’ve chosen what I think are the 10 most beautiful shots of Saturn, placing them in the gallery above. I scoured the known universe to find the highest available resolutions of these pics, and I would suggest clicking the double arrow on the top right of the first pic to enlarge this gallery to full screen to see them in all their glory.

Seeing the beautiful ringed planet from this unusual angle at such high resolution made me want more. And because Cassini has taken so many gorgeous shots of Saturn — and thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope — there’s no shortage of lovely pics of Saturn to enjoy.

Lead image: Flickr/Gordan Ugarkovic/NASA; all other images courtesy NASA