The trailing hemisphere of Saturn's moon Rhea seen here in natural color,
displays bright, wispy terrain that is similar in appearance to that of
Dione, another one of Saturn's moon. At this distance however, the exact
nature of these wispy features remains tantalizingly out of the reach of
Cassini's cameras.
At this resolution, the wispy terrain on Rhea looks like a thin coating
painted onto the moon's surface. Cassini images from December 2004 (see
PIA06163) revealed that, when seen at moderate resolution, Dione's
wispy terrain is comprised of many long, narrow and braided fractures.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to
create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini
spacecraft narrow angle camera on Jan. 16, 2005, at a distance of
approximately 496,500 kilometers (308,600 miles) from Rhea and at a
Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 35 degrees. Resolution in the
original image was about 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel. The image has
been rotated so that north on Rhea is up. Contrast was enhanced and the
image was 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.