Craters on Saturn's moon Pandora exhibit clarity and depth in this
anaglyph, or 3D view, from Cassini.
This stereo view shows the rugged, irregular shape caused by multiple
large impacts, and the smaller craters formed most recently on this tiny
satellite. Gravity is weak on Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles across),
but it does hold onto the loose material formed by catering. The mantle of
fine debris partially hides older craters, slowly covering and filling
them as it coats the moon.
See PIA07632 for a color view of Pandora, taken at the same time.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on Sept. 5, 2005, at a distance of approximately
52,700 kilometers (32,700 miles) from Pandora. Image scale is 312 meters
(1,024 feet) 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.