Cassini: Before Wide Shadows (Tethys)

[bystander]

NASA JPL-Caltech | Cassini Solstice Mission | CICLOPS | 2012 Jan 02

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Before Wide Shadows (Tethys)

Saturn's moon Tethys orbits in front of the wide shadows cast by the rings onto the planet for this Cassini spacecraft view.

Tethys (660 miles, or 1,062 kilometers across) appears just below the rings near the center of the image. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from less than one degree above the ring plane.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Dec. 7, 2011 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Tethys. Image scale is 66 miles (107 kilometers) per pixel on Tethys.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

[geckzilla]

I'm still amazed at the apparent opaqueness of large sections of the rings.