Saturn's small, irregularly-shaped moon Epimetheus orbits against the
backdrop of the planet's rings, which are nearly edge-on in this view.
Some of the moon's larger geological features can be seen here. Epimetheus
is 116 kilometers (72 miles) across.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on Feb. 18, 2005, at a distance of approximately
990,000 kilometers (615,000 miles) from Epimetheus and at a
Sun-Epimetheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 99 degrees. Resolution in
the original image was 6 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel. 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.