PIA08836: Intriguing Texture


Intriguing Texture

Caption:

This close-up of the inner edge of the Cassini Division shows an enormous amount of structure, including a grainy texture in the bright outer B ring material near the gap edge.

An extreme enhancement of the original image, presented at right, reveals the grainy region with greater clarity.

This view looks toward the lit side of the rings from about 54 degrees below the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 8, 2006 at a distance of approximately 378,000 kilometers (235,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 68 degrees. Image scale 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 .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Saturn Rings B Ring, Cassini Division, Saturn
System Saturn
Target Type Ring Gap, Planet
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Color, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2006-12-14
Date in Caption 2006-11-08
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08836
Identifier PIA08836