Media Information

 
 
 
Collection:
NASA Cassini-Huygens Collection
Title:
The View from Iapetus
Description:
While on final approach for its Sept. 2007 close encounter with Saturn's moon Iapetus, Cassini spun around to take in a sweeping view of the Saturn System.
Full Description:
While on final approach for its Sept. 2007 close encounter with Saturn's moon Iapetus, Cassini spun around to take in a sweeping view of the Saturn System.

Iapetus (1,468 kilometers, or 912 miles across) is the only major moon of Saturn with a significant inclination to its orbit. From the other major satellites, the rings would appear nearly edge-on, but from Iapetus, the rings usually appear at a tilt, as seen here.

This natural color mosaic consists of 15 red, green and blue spectral filter images acquired in five wide-angle camera footprints that swept across the scene.

Moons visible in this image: Dione (1,126 kilometers, or 700 miles across) at center left, Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) near the left side ansa (or ring edge), Mimas (397 kilometers, or 247 miles across) a speck against the ring shadows on Saturn's western limb, Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) against the bluish backdrop of the northern hemisphere, Tethys (1,071 kilometers, or 665 miles across) near the right ansa, and Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) near lower right.

The images were obtained on Sept. 10, 2007, at a distance of approximately 3.3 million kilometers (2.1 million miles) from Saturn at a sun-Saturn-spacecraf t, or phase, angle of 33 degrees. Image scale is about 195 kilometers (121 miles) per pixel on the planet.

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:
October 15, 2007
Keywords:
flyby
Keywords:
Iapetus
Keywords:
sweeping view
Keywords:
Saturn system
facet_what:
Saturn
facet_what:
Cassini
facet_what:
Cassini-Huygens
facet_what:
Huygens Probe
facet_what:
Moon
facet_what:
Titan
facet_what:
Dione
facet_what:
Cassini Orbiter
facet_what:
Rhea
facet_what:
Sun
facet_what:
Iapetus
facet_what:
Tethys
facet_what:
Enceladus
facet_what:
Mimas
facet_where:
Saturn
facet_where:
Dione
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
facet_where:
California
facet_where:
Washington
facet_where:
Rhea
facet_where:
Tethys
facet_where:
Enceladus
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
facet_where:
Washington, D.C.
facet_when:
October 15, 2007
facet_when_year:
2007
UID:
SPD-SATRN-2787
original url:

The View from Iapetus