Saturn's moon Prometheus is seen shepherding the inner edge of Saturn's F
ring. Prometheus is 102 kilometers (63 miles) across and was captured in
a close-up view by the Cassini spacecraft near the time of orbital
insertion at Saturn (PIA06098). A number of clumps are visible here
along the arcing F ring.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on
Aug. 5, 2004, at a distance of 8.2 million kilometers (5.1 million miles)
from Saturn through a filter sensitive to visible green light. The image
scale is 49 kilometers (33 miles) per pixel. Contrast was slightly
enhanced 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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science,
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 and the Cassini imaging team home page,
http://ciclops.org.