Cassini continues to survey the small worlds that orbit near Saturn's
rings, capturing this view of Epimetheus. The moon's lumpy, irregular
topography can be seen here, along with several impact craters. Epimetheus
is 116 kilometers (72 miles) across.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on May 20, 2005, at a distance of approximately
345,000 kilometers (214,000 miles) from Epimetheus and at a
Sun-Epimetheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 26 degrees. Resolution in
the original image was 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel. The view was
magnified by a factor of two and contrast-enhanced to aid visibility of
the moon's surface. A closer view of Epimetheus, taken from a different
viewing angle is also available (see PIA06226).
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.
For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
