PIA11546: Dione's Southern Basin


Dione’s Southern Basin

Caption:

A large impact basin dominates the high southern latitudes of Saturn's moon Dione.

See PIA09821 to learn more from a similar image. Lit terrain seen here is on the anti-Saturn side of Dione (1123 kilometers, or 698 miles across). North on Dione is up and rotated 14 degrees to the right.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 25, 2009. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 680,000 kilometers (420,000 miles) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 68 degrees. Image scale is 4 kilometers (2.5 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 Dione 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 Grayscale, Impact, Rotation, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2009-07-29
Date in Caption 2009-05-25
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11546
Identifier PIA11546