Encke Structure

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Caption:

Although the embedded moon Pan is nowhere to be seen, there is a bright clump-like feature visible here, within the Encke Division. Also discernible are periodic brightness variations along the outer (right side) gap edge.

See PIA07528 for further information about Pan, the Encke Gap and its ringlets.

The view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 17 degrees below the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 9, 2006 at a distance of approximately 421,000 kilometers (261,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale on the sky at the distance of Saturn is 2 kilometers (1 mile) 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 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 .

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