This image reveals the odd shape of Saturn's moon Hyperion and an
intriguing variation in brightness across its surface. The diameter of
Hyperion is 266 kilometers (165 miles).
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow
angle camera on Oct. 20, 2004, at a distance of about 2.2 million
kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Hyperion and at a
Sun-Hyperion-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 50 degrees. The image scale
is 13 kilometers (8 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 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.