Sunday, April 8, 2012

Mimas, Epimetheus, and the Rings


Two of Saturn's moons straddle the planet's rings in this color view.

Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles across) is closest to the Cassini spacecraft here. Epimetheus (113 kilometers, or 70 miles across) is on the far side of the rings. Saturn's shadow cuts across the middle of the rings. This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on October 24, 2009 at a distance of approximately 2.7 million kilometers (1.7 million miles) from Epimetheus and 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Mimas. Scale on Mimas is 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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