This view of the trailing hemisphere of Saturn's moon Rhea shows the
region's bright wispy markings, but also shows off the moon's craters in
great detail. Of particular interest to imaging scientists is the
distribution and orientation of the many craters with polygonal rims.
These are craters with rough, angular shapes, rather than smooth,
circular ones. Rhea is 1,528 kilometers (949 miles) across.
This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow
angle camera on Jan. 16, 2005, at a distance of approximately 500,000
kilometers (311,000 miles) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or
phase, angle of 35 degrees. (PIA06578 is a true color version
of this image.) Resolution in the original image was about 3 kilometers
(2 miles) per pixel. The image has been rotated so that north on Rhea is
up. Contrast was enhanced and the image was 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 and the Cassini imaging team home page,
http://ciclops.org.
