Media Information

 
 
 
Collection:
NASA Planetary Photo Journal Collection
Title:
Sun-Drenched Rhea
Original Caption Released with Image:
Saturn's brightly sunlit moon Rhea commands the foreground in this image from Cassini. The planet's splendid rings are discernible in the background. Rhea is 1,528 kilometers (949 miles) across.

The spacecraft was just above the ringplane when it acquired this image, and thus captured the darkened appearance of the dense B ring when viewed with sunlight filtered through the rings. From this perspective, bright areas in the rings are regions of low density, containing very small particles that effectively scatter light toward Cassini.

North on Rhea is up and rotated about 25 degrees to the left. This view shows principally the anti-Saturn hemisphere on Rhea. The right side of Rhea is overexposed.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 18, 2005, at a distance of approximately 540,000 kilometers (340,000 miles) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 110 degrees. The image scale is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.

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 team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Produced By:
Cassini Imaging Team
Mission:
Cassini
Spacecraft:
Cassini Orbiter
Target Name:
Rhea
Is a satellite of:
Saturn
Instrument:
Imaging Science Subsystem - Narrow Angle
Product Size:
1024 samples x 1024 lines
Primary Data Set:
Cassini
facet_what:
Sun
facet_what:
Moon
facet_what:
Rhea
facet_what:
Saturn
facet_what:
Cassini
facet_what:
Visible Light
facet_what:
Cassini Orbiter
facet_what:
Huygens Probe
facet_what:
Cassini-Huygens
facet_what:
Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
facet_what:
Rhea (Saturn Moon)
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
facet_where:
Rhea
facet_where:
Saturn
facet_where:
California
facet_where:
Washington
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
facet_where:
Washington, D.C.
Image #:
PIA07517
UID:
SPD-PHOTJ-PIA07517
orignial url:

Sun-Drenched Rhea