PIA08184: Ring Moon, Ring Shadows

Target Name: Saturn Is a satellite of: Sol (our sun) Mission: Cassini-Huygens Spacecraft: Cassini Orbiter Instrument: Imaging Science Subsystem - Narrow Angle Product Size: 1021 samples x 715 lines Produced By: Cassini Imaging Team Primary Data Set: Cassini Full-Res TIFF: PIA08184.tif (731 kB) Full-Res JPEG: PIA08184.jpg (18.73 kB)

Original Caption Released with Image: The small, dark form of Janus cruises along in front of bright Saturn. The edge-on rings cast dramatic shadows onto the northern hemisphere. Janus is 181 kilometers (113 miles) across. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 21, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.9 million kilometers (1.8 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 17 kilometers (11 miles) per pixel on Janus. 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. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute