PIA12725: Flying by Epimetheus


Flying by Epimetheus

Caption:

Swinging by Saturn's small moon Epimetheus, Cassini snapped this shot during the spacecraft's April 7, 2010, flyby.

See PIA09813 and PIA06226 for even closer views from earlier flybys. Lit terrain seen here is on the Saturn-facing side of Epimetheus (113 kilometers, or 70 miles across). North on Epimetheus is up and rotated 27 degrees to the left.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 87,000 kilometers (54,000 miles) from Epimetheus and at a Sun-Epimetheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 69 degrees. Image scale is 519 meters (1,703 feet) 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 Epimetheus 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 Rotation, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2010-09-21
Date in Caption 2010-04-07
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12725
Identifier PIA12725