PIA09907: Atlas and Daphnis


Atlas and Daphnis

Caption:

Looking upward from beneath the ringplane, the Cassini spacecraft spies Saturn's "wave maker" and "flying saucer" moons.

Daphnis (8 kilometers, or 5 miles across at its widest point) and its gravitationally induced edge waves are seen at left within the Keeler Gap. The equatorial bulge on Atlas (30 kilometers, or 19 miles across at its widest point) is clearly visible here.

See PIA06237 and PIA08405 for additional images and information about these two moons.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 16 degrees below the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 22, 2008. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 898,000 kilometers (558,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is about 5 kilometers (3 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/ . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Saturn Rings Atlas, Daphnis, 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 Grayscale, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2008-05-22
Date in Caption 2008-04-22
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09907
Identifier PIA09907