Rhea, Janus and the Rings

The Cassini spacecraft looks past Saturn's rings and small moon Janus to spy the planet's second largest moon, Rhea.

Janus is closest to Cassini here. The rings are between Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles across) and Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across). Lit terrain seen on Rhea is on the leading hemisphere of that moon. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 11, 2010. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 3 million kilometers (2 million miles) from Rhea and approximately 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Janus. Image scale is 18 kilometers (11 miles) per pixel on Rhea. Image scale is 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel on Janus.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute