The three very different moons seen here provide targets of great interest
for planetary scientists studying the Saturn system. Captured here by
Cassini, along with the rings, are Tethys at upper right, Enceladus below
center and Janus at lower left.
Researchers study the orbital dance of Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles
across) with Epimetheus, tectonics and cratering on Tethys (1,071
kilometers, or 665 miles across) and geyser activity on Enceladus (505
kilometers, or 314 miles across). And these are only a few of the wonders
that await exploration in the realm of the ringed planet.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on March 16, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.4
million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Tethys, 1.9 million kilometers
(1.2 million miles) from Enceladus and 2.2 million kilometers (1.4 million
miles) from Janus. The image scale is 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel on
Tethys, 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Enceladus and 13 kilometers
(8 miles) per pixel on Epimetheus.
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.
