With this false-color view, Cassini presents the closest look yet at
Saturn's small moon Epimetheus (epp-ee-MEE-thee-uss).
The color of Epimetheus in this view appears to vary in a non-uniform way
across the different facets of the moon's irregular surface. Usually,
color differences among planetary terrains identify regional variations
in the chemical composition of surface materials. However, surface color
variations can also be caused by wavelength-dependent differences in the
way a particular material reflects light at different lighting angles. The
color variation in this false-color view suggests such "photometric
effects" because the surface appears to have a more bluish cast in areas
where sunlight strikes the surface at greater angles.
This false color view combines images obtained using filters sensitive to
ultraviolet, polarized green and infrared light. The images were taken at
a Sun-Epimetheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 115 degrees, thus part of
the moon is in shadow to the right. This view shows an area seen only very
obliquely by NASA's Voyager spacecraft. The scene has been rotated so that
north on Epimetheus is up.
The slightly reddish feature in the lower left is a crater named Pollux.
The large crater just below center is Hilairea, which has a diameter of
about 33 kilometers (21 miles).
At 116 kilometers (72 miles) across, Epimetheus is slightly smaller than
its companion moon, Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across), which
orbits at essentially the same distance from Saturn.
The images for this color composite were obtained with the Cassini
spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 30, 2005, at a distance of
approximately 74,600 kilometers (46,350 miles) from Epimetheus. Resolution
in the original images was about 450 meters (1,480 feet) per pixel. This
view has been 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.
For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
