PIA08157: Crescent Moon with Rings


Crescent Moon with Rings

Caption:

This poetic scene shows the giant, smog-enshrouded moon Titan behind Saturn's nearly edge-on rings. Much smaller Epimetheus (116 kilometers, or 72 miles across) is just visible to the left of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across).

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 9, 2006, at a distance of approximately 4.1 million kilometers (2.5 million miles) from Titan. The image scale is 25 kilometers (16 miles) per pixel on Titan. The brightness of Epimetheus was enhanced for visibility.

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 and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Titan Epimetheus, Saturn Rings
System Saturn
Target Type Satellite Ring
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Grayscale, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2006-04-14
Date in Caption 2006-03-09
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08157
Identifier PIA08157