This map of Saturn's moon Dione, generated from Cassini images taken
during the spacecraft's first two orbits of Saturn, illustrates the
imaging coverage planned during Cassini's first Dione flyby on Dec. 14,
2004.
Colored lines enclose regions that will be covered at different imaging
scales as Cassini approaches Dione.
Cassini will zoom past Dione at a distance of approximately 81,400
kilometers (50,600 miles) during this flyby. An even closer encounter
with Dione is in store for Cassini in October 2005, when the spacecraft
is slated to fly past the icy moon at a mere 500 kilometers (311 miles).
Images from this week's flyby will be superior in resolution to those
obtained by NASA's Voyager 1 in November 1980. Voyager 1 passed Dione at
a distance of 161,520 kilometers (100,364 miles) at closest approach,
yielding a best resolution of approximately 1 kilometer per pixel. The
area to be imaged at highest resolution by Cassini during this upcoming
flyby will be centered on the bright, wispy terrain on Dione's trailing
hemisphere, marked by the red outline on this map. The resolution of
Cassini images in this region will be 500 meters per pixel and better.
The map was created by images acquired in visible light using the Cassini
narrow angle camera. The highest southern latitudes on Dione have not yet
been seen by Cassini, resulting in the map's lower limit of approximately
80 degrees south latitude.
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.
