Saturday, October 9, 2010

Rhea and Titan


A darkly defined Rhea passes before the fuzzy orb of Titan in this Cassini view of Saturn's two largest moons.

Rhea is closer to the spacecraft in this view. See PIA09895 to learn more about Rhea. See PIA08137 to learn more about Titan's atmosphere.

Lit terrain seen here is on the Saturn-facing sides of Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) and 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 November 19, 2009. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (684,000 miles) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 118 degrees. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 118 degrees. Image scale is 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel on Rhea and 14 kilometers (9 miles) on Titan.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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