The small moon Janus is illuminated by light from both the sun and Saturn.
This view looks toward the south pole of Janus (179 kilometers, or 111
miles across) which lies on the terminator just below the center of the
image. Brightly lit terrain seen on the right is on the leading hemisphere
of Janus. Light reflected off Saturn dimly lights the Saturn-facing side
of Janus on the top left of the image.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on May 9, 2009. The view was acquired at a distance of
approximately 974,000 kilometers (605,000 miles) from Janus and at a
sun-Janus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 99 degrees. Image scale is 6
kilometers (4 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 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.