Now, in southern summer, Saturn's shadow stretches across the sunlit
southern surface of its rings. Saturn's moon Janus orbits just outside
of the main rings and appears below them in this scene. Janus is
absolutely dwarfed by the bulk of its gigantic parent. Janus is 181
kilometers (113 miles) across.
Bands of ring material within the Cassini Division are visible here, near
the outer edge of the bright B ring. The planet's night side is visible
at the right. This view is from Cassini's vantage point beneath the ring
plane.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide
angle camera on Jan. 17, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.2 million
kilometers (746,000 miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 66 kilometers
(41 miles) per pixel. Janus was brightened by a factor of two, and
contrast in the scene was enhanced 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. For images visit the Cassini imaging team home page
http://ciclops.org.