Titan and Dione

Crisp details on Dione contrast with the haziness of Titan in this Cassini spacecraft image of a pair of Saturn's moons.

Smaller Dione is at the bottom of the image, and that moon's wispy terrain is visible. See PIA12608 to learn more about Dione's surface features. Titan dominates the rest of the image, and that moon's north polar hood is visible here. See PIA08137 to learn more about Titan's atmospheric haze.

Lit terrain seen here is on the trailing hemisphere of Dione (1,123 kilometers, or 698 miles across) and in the area between the trailing hemisphere and anti-Saturn side of Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across).

The image was taken in visible blue light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 20, 2010. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 101 degrees. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (808,000 miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 101 degrees. Image scale is 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel on Dione and 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel on Titan.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute