The oblong form of Prometheus glides by, trailing behind it wiggles in
Saturn's ribbon-like F ring.
Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across) causes a great deal of
perturbation to the F ring, including kinks, knots and gores in the shape
of the ring structure. By studying the moon and its interactions with the
F ring scientists are learning a great deal about how ring structures form
and evolve.
This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 27 degrees
above the ringplane.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on Feb. 24, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.5
million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Prometheus. Image scale is 9
kilometers (6 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.