Saturn sits with its attendants in the icy depths of the outer Solar System.
Near the edge-on rings, moons visible from left to right: Dione (1,126 kilometers, or 700 miles across), Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) and Mimas (397 kilometers, or 247 miles across). The ring shadow forms a headband crowning Saturn's northern hemisphere.
The image was taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 752 nanometers with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Aug. 8, 2007. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 4.1 million kilometers (2.6 million miles) from Saturn.
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/home/index.cfm . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .
Name | Value | Additional Values |
---|---|---|
Target | Saturn Rings | Dione, Enceladus, Mimas, Saturn |
System | Saturn | |
Target Type | Ring | Planet, Satellite |
Mission | Cassini-Huygens | |
Instrument Host | Cassini Orbiter | |
Host Type | Orbiter | |
Instrument | Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) | |
Detector | Wide Angle Camera | |
Extra Keywords | Grayscale, Infrared, Shadow, Visual | |
Acquisition Date | ||
Release Date | 2007-09-20 | |
Date in Caption | 2007-08-08 | |
Image Credit | NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute | |
Source | photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09732 | |
Identifier | PIA09732 |