Saturn’s shepherd moon Prometheus hovers between the A and F rings. Image credit; NASA/JPL/SSI. Click to enlarge
Saturn’s shepherd moon Prometheus hovers between the A and F rings as if suspended on an invisible thread, while bright clouds drift in Saturn’s atmosphere approximately 130,000 kilometers (81,000 miles) beyond. It is noteworthy that such clouds are visible here in the shadows cast by the rings. Prometheus is 102 kilometers (63 miles) across.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 3, 2005, at a distance of approximately 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel. This view was processed to enhance fine details.
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 . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Original Source: NASA/JPL/SSI News Release
Sending tourists to space is still relatively novel in the grand scheme of humanity's journey…
On May 10th, 2024, people across North America were treated to a rare celestial event:…
The gravitational wave background was first detected in 2016. It was announced following the release…
The giant outer planets haven’t always been in their current position. Uranus and Neptune for…
The hunt for extrasolar planets has revealed some truly interesting candidates, not the least of…
How did complex life emerge and evolve on the Earth and what does this mean…