Saturn's moon Tethys, named for a sea goddess, shows off two of its more
puzzling features in this Cassini image. Ithaca Chasma, near lower right,
stretches for more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) across the moon's
surface. The origin of this canyon system, which is 100 kilometers (60
miles) across on average, is not completely understood, but might have
resulted from the impact that created the giant crater Odysseus. Tethys
is 1,071 kilometers (665 miles) across.
Also notable in this view is the dark band that girdles the moon's
equator. The nature of this feature may be better understood following
Cassini's planned close flyby in September, 2005.
The lit surface visible here is on the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere;
north on Tethys is straight up.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on May 22, 2005, at a distance of approximately
884,000 kilometers (550,000 miles) from Tethys and at a
Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 97 degrees. Resolution in the
original image was 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel. The image has been
contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of two 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 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.
