PIA10597: Not-So-Dark Side of Tethys


Not-So-Dark Side of Tethys

Caption:

The huge Odysseus Crater is clearly illuminated by the sun on the western limb of Tethys, but Saturn shining from the right makes the smaller craters on the eastern part of the moon also visible.

The ancient Odysseus Crater is 450 kilometers, or 280 miles, across and covers a sizable chunk of the moon. North on Tethys (1062 kilometers, or 660 miles across) is up and rotated 31 degrees to the left. This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of the moon.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 22, 2009. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 793,000 kilometers (493,000 miles) from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 112 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 .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Tethys Saturn
System Saturn
Target Type Satellite Planet
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Crater, Grayscale, Rotation, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2009-03-12
Date in Caption 2009-01-22
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10597
Identifier PIA10597