PIA10561: The Classic Wedge


The Classic Wedge

Caption:

This November 2008 Cassini snapshot showcases a classic view of the triangular shape typical of many of the spokes in Saturn's outer B ring.

Small particles in the ring compose the spokes and these wedge-shaped patterns seem to be appearing more often as Saturn approaches equinox.

The moons Pan, Pandora and Janus are also visible. Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles across) is farthest outside the rings. Pandora (81 kilometers, or 50 miles across) orbits outside the faint F ring. Pan (28 kilometers, or 17 miles across) is near the top right of the image and can be seen as a faint sphere cutting a path in the thin black strip of the Encke Gap in the A ring.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 12 degrees below the ringplane.The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 10, 2008 at a distance of approximately 1.029 million kilometers (639,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 29 degrees. Image scale is 58 kilometers (36 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 Saturn Rings B Ring, Encke Gap, Janus, Pan, Pandora, Saturn
System Saturn
Target Type Ring Gap, Planet, Satellite
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Wide Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Grayscale, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2009-01-21
Date in Caption 2008-11-10
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10561
Identifier PIA10561