Opposing Rhea

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Caption:

A bright ray crater dominates this view of the leading hemisphere of Rhea, obtained at a time when the Sun was nearly aligned behind the Cassini spacecraft, or "opposition."

At opposition, shadows disappear, making topography appear less rugged. Consequently, in this view, topographic features such as crater walls are harder to see.

See PIA08402 for a close-up view of Rhea.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 5, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 869,000 kilometers (540,000 miles) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 4 degrees. Image scale is 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 .

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