Media Information

 
 
 
Collection:
NASA Cassini-Huygens Collection
Title:
Speck of a Moon
Description:
This view from Cassini contains not one, but two moons. Tethys is slightly overexposed so that the real target of this image, tiny Atlas, can be seen.
Full Description:
This view from Cassini contains not one, but two moons. Tethys is slightly overexposed so that the real target of this image, tiny Atlas, can be seen. Atlas is at image center, just outside the A ring.

A couple of faint ringlets are visible in the Encke Gap, right of center. Tethys is 1,071 kilometers (665 miles) wide; Atlas is a mere 32 kilometers (20 miles) wide.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 21, 2005, at a distance of approximately 2 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) from Tethys and 1.7 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Atlas. The image scale is 12 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Tethys.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.n…. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

*Credit:* NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Date:
January 25, 2006
Keywords:
Tethys
Keywords:
A ring
Keywords:
ringlets
Keywords:
Atlas
facet_what:
Saturn
facet_what:
Cassini
facet_what:
Cassini-Huygens
facet_what:
Huygens Probe
facet_what:
Moon
facet_what:
Cassini Orbiter
facet_what:
Visible Light
facet_what:
Tethys
facet_what:
Atlas
facet_where:
Saturn
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
facet_where:
California
facet_where:
Washington
facet_where:
Tethys
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
facet_where:
Washington, D.C.
facet_when:
January 25, 2006
facet_when_year:
2006
UID:
SPD-SATRN-1967
original url:

Speck of a Moon