In this image, Dione, a moon of Saturn, exhibits some of the interesting
bright and dark markings for which it is renowned. From Voyager images,
Dione is known to have bright wispy markings, some of which may be visible
here. Dione is 1,118 kilometers (695 miles) wide.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow
angle camera on Sept. 15, 2004, at a distance of 8.8 million kilometers
(5.4 million miles) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase,
angle of 83 degrees. The image scale is 53 kilometers (33 miles) per
pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of four and
contrast-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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science,
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.