Plunging cliffs and towering mountains characterize the gigantic impact
structure called Odysseus on Saturn's moon Tethys. The great impact basin
lies before the Cassini spacecraft in one of the best views yet obtained.
Quite a few small craters are visible inside Odysseus (450 kilometers, or
280 miles across), making it clear that this is not a very young
structure. However, a comparison of cratering density between the interior
of Odysseus and the surrounding terrain should show whether the large
basin is at least relatively young.
Odysseus is on the leading hemisphere of Tethys (1,071 kilometers, or 665
miles across). North is up and rotated 18 degrees to the right.
The image was taken in polarized ultraviolet light with the Cassini
spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 24, 2005 at a distance of
approximately 196,000 kilometers (122,000 miles) from Tethys and at a
Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 85 degrees. Resolution in the
original image was 1 kilometer (3,831 feet) per pixel. The image has been
magnified by a factor of two and contrast-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 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. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at
http://ciclops.org.
