10 July 2011
The dark side of Saturn, Saturn’s rings and a trio of the planet’s numerous moons
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
NASA recently published a beautiful image of Saturn, the ringed wonderful planet. The image was acquired by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. It shows a trio of Saturn’s moons, shining against the dark night side of the planet. Saturn’s magnificent rings are visible nearly edge-on.
The orb of giant Saturn is on the left this image, but is too dark to see. The three Saturnian moons are Rhea (1,528 km across), which is the nearest to the Cassini spacecraft, and appears largest at the center of the image, Enceladus (504 km across), located to the right of Rhea, and Dione (1,123 km across), partly eclipsed by Saturn, to the left of Rhea. The names of these moons come from Greek mythology.
The satellites of Saturn are numerous and diverse, ranging, in size, from tiny moonlets, less than 1 kilometer across, to the giant Titan (5,150 km across), which is larger than Mercury (4,880 km across), the smallest and innermost planet. Saturn has at least 61 moons and many moonlets.
Cassini was looking on Saturn, from just above the plane of the ring.
The image was taken in visual light, applying Cassini’s narrow-angle camera, on 25 April 2011. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 2.2 million km from Rhea.
References
NASA
www.nasa.gov/
NASA’s Photojournal
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html
Wikipedia
Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Senior Astronomy Specialist