This Cassini image captures three of Saturn's ring moons in a single view.
From left to right, the moons seen in this view are Pandora (84
kilometers, or 52 miles across), Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles
across) and Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across).
The ring moons are an interesting study in the dynamics of orbiting
bodies. Prometheus and Pandora shepherd Saturn's thin F ring, whose
particles orbit between the pair. Prometheus has been observed 'stealing'
material from the F ring in images from Cassini. The orbit of Janus is
within 50 kilometers (31 miles) of the orbit of another moon, slightly
smaller Epimetheus. Janus and Epimetheus exchange positions in their
orbital path (inner to outer) every four years.
Saturn's bright, icy rings are overexposed in this scene. However,
this has allowed us to see material present within the Cassini Division
(near the lower right).
This view is from Cassini's vantage point beneath the ring plane. The
image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle
camera on Jan. 29, 2005, at a distance of approximately 3.4 million
kilometers (2.1 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 20
kilometers (12 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.
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