08 October 2007
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
NASA recently published an intriguing image of Saturn and its second largest moon Rhea (1,528 km across). The image was acquired by the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft.
Icy Rhea creeps across the scene as Cassini observes the turbulent Saturnian atmosphere. Saturn's graceful rings are visible as a dark line across center. Their shadows are projected onto the northern half of this image. The shadows of the most massive Saturnian rings, the A ring and the B ring, are darker than that of the delicate C ring.
The view looks toward the dark side of the rings from less than 1° above the ringplane.
The image was taken with Cassini's narrow-angle camera on 13 August 2007 using an infrared filter. The spacecraft was at a distance of approximately 4.1 million km from Saturn.
Rhea orbits Saturn every 4.5 days, at a distance of approximately 530,000 km. In Greek mythology, Rhea was a sister of Cronus (Saturn).
Further Reading
The Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
Rhea
http://www.nineplanets.org/rhea.html
Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Senior Astronomy Specialist