PIA09788: True Colors


True Colors

Caption:

Saturn's dark-side rings glow in shades of brown and gold, contrasting with the more neutral appearance of the icy moon Tethys.

This view looks toward the anti-Saturn side of Tethys (1,062 kilometers, 660 miles across). North is up and rotated 35 degrees to the right.

The view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 2 degrees above the ringplane.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The view was acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 29, 2007, at a distance of approximately 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 21 degrees. Image scale is 12 kilometers (8 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 Tethys Saturn, Saturn Rings
System Saturn
Target Type Satellite Planet, Ring
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Color, Rotation, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2007-12-07
Date in Caption 2007-10-29
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09788
Identifier PIA09788