On June 11, 2004, during its closest approach to Phoebe, Cassini obtained
this extremely high resolution view of a dark, desolate landscape. Regions
of different reflectivity are clearly visible on what appears to be a
gently rolling surface. Notable are several bright-rayed impact craters,
lots of small craters with bright-colored floors and light-colored streaks
across the landscape. Note also the several sharply defined craters --
probably fairly young features -- near the upper left corner.
This high-resolution image was obtained at a phase, or
Sun-Phoebe-spacecraft, angle of 30.7 degrees, and from a distance of
approximately 2,365 kilometers (1,470 miles). The image scale is
approximately 14 meters (46 feet) per pixel. The image was high-pass
filtered to bring out small scale features and then enhanced in contrast.
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.