A small new found object, temporarily designated S/2004 S 3, has been
seen orbiting Saturn's outer F ring. The tiny object, seen in this movie
centered in a green box, orbits the planet at a distance of approximately
141,000 kilometers (86,420 miles) from the center of Saturn. Its nature,
moon or clump, is not presently known.
This movie is a sequence of 18 images taken with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow angle camera on June 21, 2004. Images were taken every eight
minutes over the course of two and one-quarter hours. Each image has been
enhanced to show the presence of the newly detected object.
In the first frame, the small moon Atlas (32 kilometers or 20 miles
across) can be seen near the main rings at lower left. About one-third of
the way through the sequence the moon Janus (181 kilometers or 112 miles
across) appears in two images at upper right.
The size of the object has been estimated to be four to five kilometers
(two to three miles) across. Because it is so small, it is not resolved
and appears as a faint point of light just barely visible above the
background noise.
These images, which are part of a sequence specifically designed to
search for small new moons in the inner Saturnian system, have not been
cleaned of artifacts but have been greatly enhanced in contrast to
increase visibility. Consequently, the main rings are overexposed, and
many cosmic ray hits and noise patterns are clearly apparent. The image
scale is approximately 40 kilometers (25 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 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.