From 34 degrees above Saturn's equatorial plane, Cassini gazed down at
Saturn's moon Epimetheus. The region seen here includes territory farther
north and east than that imaged in March 2005 (see PIA06226).
The two largest craters visible here are the only officially named
features on Epimetheus. The crater at the left (at about the 9 o'clock
position) is named Pollux; the crater at lower left (containing a string
of several smaller craters) is called Hilairea. Epimetheus is 116
kilometers (72 miles) across.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on July 14, 2005, at a distance of approximately
87,000 kilometers (54,000 miles) from Epimetheus and at a
Sun-Epimetheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 95 degrees. The image scale
is 520 meters (1,710 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 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.