Big Boulder

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Caption:

Saturn's small, irregularly-shaped moon Epimetheus orbits against the backdrop of the planet's rings, which are nearly edge-on in this view. Some of the moon's larger geological features can be seen here. Epimetheus is 116 kilometers (72 miles) across.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 18, 2005, at a distance of approximately 990,000 kilometers (615,000 miles) from Epimetheus and at a Sun-Epimetheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 99 degrees. Resolution in the original image was 6 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of two to aid visibility.

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 team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org .

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