These views show surface features and color variation on the Trojan moon
Telesto. The smooth surface of this moon suggests that, like Pandora, it
is covered with a mantle of fine, dust-sized icy material.
The monochrome image was taken in visible light. To create the false-color
view (see PIA07697), ultraviolet, green and infrared images were
combined into a single black and white picture that isolates and maps
regional color differences. This "color map" was then superposed over a
clear-filter image. The origin of the color differences is not yet
understood, but may be caused by subtle differences in the surface
composition or the sizes of grains making up the icy soil.
Tiny Telesto is a mere 24 kilometers (15 miles) wide.
The image was acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on
Dec. 25, 2005 at a distance of approximately 20,000 kilometers (12,000
miles) from Telesto and at a Sun-Telesto-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 58
degrees. Image scale is 118 meters (387 feet) per pixel.
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.
