Although the embedded moon Pan is nowhere to be seen, there is a bright
clump-like feature visible here, within the Encke Division. Also
discernable are periodic brightness variations along the outer (right
side) gap edge.
See PIA07528 for further information about Pan, the Encke Gap and its
ringlets.
The view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 17 degrees
below the ringplane.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on Sept. 9, 2006 at a distance of approximately
421,000 kilometers (261,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale on the sky at
the distance of Saturn is 2 kilometers (1 mile) 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.