Cassini Captures a Menagerie of Moons

by Nancy Atkinson on August 2, 2011

This Cassini raw image shows a portion of Saturn's rings along with several moons. How many can you find? Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This stunning new Cassini image was captured on July 29, 2011, and shows a portion of Saturn’s rings along with several moons dotting the view. How many moons can you find, and can you name them?

See below for a color version of this image, put together by our own Jason Major!

Saturns moons and rings, in color. Credit: NASA / JPL / SSI. Edited by Jason Major. Click for larger version.

Jason shares on his Flickr page the process of how he edited the image. As Jason says, it’s a moon flash mob!

See the Cassini Solstice Mission raw images page for a larger view.

Hat tip to Stu Atkinson


Tagged as: Cassini, Saturn, Saturn's Moons

  • Niki Giada

    9 moon!

  • Anonymous

    I count four, plus a few stars in the background.

    • Anonymous

      One of my ‘stars’ was dust on the screen. Ooops!

  • Anonymous

    7 moons are clearly visible in the first picture. At first I thought the big moon to the far right of the pic was actually saturn! The colour pic shows some of the bumps on the surface, which helped me see that it could not be saturn (I’m not very observant).

    If you look at the high resolution pic from NASA, you can see more than a dozen. Maybe 16 or 17? Up to 20? There are a lot of very faint smears which have the shape of tiny moons, but I’m not sure.

  • William Sparrow

    I count 7 moons in the first raw image, but only 5 in Jason’s edited version. Great pics.

  • William Sparrow

    I count 7 moons in the first raw image, but only 5 in Jason’s edited version. Great pics.

  • zeljko

    Hopefully, one day not in a distant future, news like this will occupy front page of our so called “media”.
    So far, no takers.

    • IVAN3MAN_AT_LARGE

      There would be a multitude of takers if the article title was Ménage à Trois !

      • Ray Fowler

        You mean a “moonage a trois”, of course!

  • Anonymous

    7 moons! the rest of faint objects am not sure if they are planets, could be background stars as well.

  • ITSRUF

    I thought the closest moon was Saturn, too! The color images helped.
    I count 7: and if I could be so bold: Teythys is closest, then there is Rhea and Encelladus, Pan or Prometheus in the rings, Pheobe to the left, and two small “starlike” moons too small to tell what they are.

    Just my W.A.G. :)

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