Cassini: Across to Prometheus
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 3:16 pm
NASA | JPL-Caltech | Cassini Solstice Mission | CICLOPS | 2012 Mar 05
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Across to Prometheus
The Cassini spacecraft looks across Saturn's rings and finds the moon Prometheus, a shepherd of the thin F ring.
Prometheus (53 miles, or 86 kilometers across) looks like a small white bulge near the F ring -- the outermost ring seen here -- above the center of the image. See Soft Collision and Shaping the Drapes to learn how the moon perturbs the F ring.
Kinky, discontinuous ringlets can also be seen in the Encke Gap of the A ring on the left of the image. See Encke Gap Ringlet to learn more. This view looks toward the southern, unilluminated side of the rings from about 1 degree below the ringplane. Four background stars are visible.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 1, 2012. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million miles (1.8 million km) from Prometheus. Image scale is 7 miles (11 km) per pixel.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
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