PIA01274: Hubble Discovery Image of New Moon Orbiting Saturn


Hubble Discovery Image of New Moon Orbiting Saturn

Caption:

This four-picture sequence (spanning 30 minutes) shows one of four new moons discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope, in images taken of Saturn on May 22, 1995, when Saturn's rings were tilted edge-on to Earth.

Identified as S/1995 S3, the moon appears as an elongated white spot near the center of each image. The new moon lies just outside Saturn's outermost "F" ring and is no bigger than about 15 miles across. The brighter object to the left is the moon Epimetheus, which was discovered during the ring-plane crossing of 1966. Both moons change position from frame to frame because they are orbiting the planet.

Saturn appears as a bright white disk at far right, and the edge-on rings extend diagonally to the upper left. To the left of the vertical line, each image has been processed to remove residual light from the rings and accentuate any faint satellites orbiting near the rings. The long observing times necessary to detect the faint satellites have resulted in Saturn's bright, overexposed appearance.

Saturn ring plane crossings happen only once every 15 years, and historically have given astronomers an opportunity to discover new satellites that are normally lost in the glare of the planet's bright ring system.

Background Info:

The Wide Field/Planetary Camera 2 was developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center for NASA's Office of Space Science.

This image and other images and data received from the Hubble Space Telescope are posted on the World Wide Web on the Space Telescope Science Institute home page at URL http://oposite.stsci.edu/ .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Saturn Epimetheus, Saturn Rings
System Saturn
Target Type Planet Ring, Satellite
Mission Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
Instrument Host Hubble Space Telescope
Host Type Space Telescope
Instrument Wide Field/Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2)
Detector
Extra Keywords Grayscale, Infrared, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 1998-08-02
Date in Caption 1995-05-22
Image Credit NASA/JPL/STScI
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01274
Identifier PIA01274