Three of Saturn's moons appear almost like a string of pearls in this
Cassini image, but looks are deceiving.
Moons visible in this image: Mimas (398 kilometers, or 247 miles across)
at right, Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles across) near center and
Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across) in the lower left corner.
Mimas' orbit inclination of 1.6 degrees relative to Saturn's equator is
enough to make it appear as if it orbits just beyond the F ring when
viewed from this vantage point of 5 degrees below the rings. In fact, it
is 34,000 kilometers (21,000 miles) more distant than Janus.
Contrast in the image was enhanced to make visible the faces of moons lit
by reflected light from Saturn (their left sides). Notable here is the
irregular shape of Janus, compared with larger, spherical Mimas. The
bright B ring (at upper left) appears overexposed due to the extreme
contrast enhancement.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow
angle camera on Jan. 22, 2005, at a distance of approximately 2.7 million
kilometers (1.7 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 16
kilometers (10 miles) 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 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.