This intense false-color view highlights and enhances color variations
across the cratered and cracked surface of Saturn's moon Rhea.
To create the false-color view, ultraviolet, green and infrared images
were combined into a single black and white picture that isolates and maps
regional color differences. This "color map" was then superposed over a
clear-filter image. The origin of the color differences is not yet
understood, but it may be caused by subtle differences in the surface
composition or grain sizes making up the icy soil.
This view shows terrain on the trailing hemisphere of Rhea (1,528
kilometers, or 949 miles across). North is up.
The images were taken using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on
Jan. 18, 2006, at a distance of approximately 268,000 kilometers (166,000
miles) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 115
degrees. Image scale is 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) per pixel.
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 operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
