Chaotically tumbling and seriously eroded by impacts, Hyperion is one of
Saturn's more unusual satellites. Scientists believe the moon to be quite
porous, with a great deal of its volume being empty space.
Impact blasted Hyperion is 280 kilometers (174 miles) across. Only part of
the moon is visible in this image, the rest being hidden in shadow.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using
a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at
930 nanometers. The view was acquired on Feb. 15, 2007 at a distance of
approximately 224,000 kilometers (139,000 miles) from Hyperion. Image
scale is 1 kilometer (3,281 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/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
