17 August 2008
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) recently published an awesome image of Janus, a small, irregularly-shaped Saturnian moon. The image was acquired from an orbit around the ringed planet, by the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft.
The image is actually one of the closest views of Janus (179 km across). The slopes of some craters hint a dark material on the surface of the moon. A bright linear feature runs up the wall of the large crater at bottom center.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on 30 June 2008. Cassini was at a distance of approximately 33,000 km from Janus. Image scale is 200 m per pixel.
Further Reading
The Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
Aymen Mohamed Ibrahem
Senior Astronomy Specialist