PIA07713: Unidentified F Ring Objects


Unidentified F Ring Objects

Caption:

A solitary clump-like feature in Saturn's F ring orbits past in this movie sequence made from Cassini images. This feature is seen magnified at the bottom right in PIA07716 .

Scientists are trying to determine whether these features are solid moonlets that help control the ring or just loose clumps of particles within the ring.

The images in this sequence were acquired in visible light using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 13, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.2 million kilometers (700,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is about 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel.

Background Info:

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Saturn Rings F Ring, Saturn
System Saturn
Target Type Ring Planet
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Clump, Color, Moonlet, Movie, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2005-09-05
Date in Caption 2005-04-13
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07713
Identifier PIA07713