The Cassini spacecraft looks past Saturn's main rings to spy the tiny moon Atlas, which orbits between the main rings and the thin F ring.
The main rings are closer to the spacecraft than Atlas is, and the moon appears as only a small, white dot in the center of the image. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. See PIA08906 and PIA08405 for other views of Atlas (19 miles, 30 kilometers across).
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 16, 2012. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 870,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) from Atlas. Image scale is 5 miles (8 kilometers) per pixel.
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
The Cassini spacecraft monitors Titan's developing south polar vortex, which is a mass of swirling gas around the pole in the atmosphere of the moon.
The vortex can be seen at the bottom of this view. See PIA14919 to learn more and PIA14920 to watch a short movie of the swirling mass. The moon's northern hood is also visible at the top of this view. See PIA08137 and PIA12775 to learn more about the hood.
This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Titan (3,200 miles, 5,150 kilometers across). North is up and rotated 14 degrees to the left.
The image was taken in visible blue light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 18, 2012. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.9 million miles (3 million kilometers) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 85 degrees. Scale in the original image was 11 miles (18 kilometers) per pixel. The image was contrast enhanced and magnified by a factor of 1.5 to enhance the visibility of features.
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
