31 August 2007
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
NASA recently published a new spectacular Cassini spacecraft image. The image shows three of Saturn's intriguing moons hovering near the planet's graceful rings.
Titan (5,150 km across), Saturn's largest moon, is visible above the thin edge-on rings. Epimetheus (116 km across) is a faint speck of light at far left. Enceladus (505 km across), the icy, geologically active moon, is gleaming in front of the ringplane, as viewed from Cassini.
Dark bands of the rings' shadows are cast onto Saturn's northern hemisphere. These shadows will be shrinking in extent, and drifting closer to Saturn's equator, to eventually emerge in Saturn's southern hemisphere, as the Saturnian equinox is due, in 2009.
The image was taken in visual light with Cassini's wide-angle camera on 23 July 2007. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million km from Saturn. Image scale is 82 km per pixel.
Further Reading
Cassini-Huygens Mission
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Senior Astronomy Specialist