In this unusual view, Cassini captured two icy moons of Saturn, Tethys and
Enceladus, in a single narrow-angle frame. Little detail is visible on the
surface of bright Enceladus, but battered Tethys shows many craters and
the huge canyon system, Ithaca Chasma. Tethys has a diameter of 1,071
kilometers (665 miles) across, while Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314
miles) across.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on Jan. 29, 2005, at a distance of approximately 3.7
million kilometers (2.3 million miles) from Tethys and 3.5 million
kilometers (2.2 million miles) from Enceladus. Resolution in the original
image was 22 kilometers (14 miles) per pixel on Tethys and 21 kilometers
(13 miles) per pixel on Enceladus. The image has been contrast-enhanced
and magnified by a factor of two to aid visibility.
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.
