PIA08843: Stretching the Gores


Stretching the Gores

Caption:

A close-up of the F ring shows dark gores in its interior faint ringlets following the passage of Prometheus. Each gore represents a single interaction of the moon with the F ring material. The gores shear out over successive orbits, becoming the long, curving features seen here.

The dark Keeler gap (42 kilometers, or 26 miles wide) is seen at right. The F ring core is similar in scale to the gap, at about 50 kilometers (30 miles) in width.

This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 31 degrees above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 25, 2006 at a distance of approximately 1.7 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 162 degrees. Image scale is 10 kilometers (6 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 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 F Ring, Prometheus, Saturn
System Saturn
Target Type Ring Planet, Satellite
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Gap, Grayscale, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2006-12-29
Date in Caption 2006-11-25
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08843
Identifier PIA08843