Cassini spied two members of Saturn's family rounding the rings in this
image from Aug. 20, 2004.
The moons visible in this image are Mimas (398 kilometers, or 247 miles
across) near upper right, and Epimetheus (116 kilometers, or 72 miles
across) near the center, outside the faint F ring.
Three major gaps in Saturn's rings can be seen here as well. The Cassini
division (4,800 kilometer or 2,980 miles wide) is the dark swath at lower
right. The Encke Gap (325 kilometers or 202 miles wide) and narrow Keeler
Gap (35 kilometers or 22 miles wide) are visible as dark arcs near the
edge of the A ring. Small clumps of material are visible in the narrow F
ring, beyond the edge of the main rings.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow
angle camera at a distance of 9 million kilometers (5.6 million miles)
from Saturn. The image scale is 54 kilometers (34 miles) per pixel. Atlas
has been brightened to improve visibility.
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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science,
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 and the Cassini imaging team home page,
http://ciclops.org.