Media Information

 
 
 
Collection:
NASA Planetary Photo Journal Collection
Title:
Watching Atlas's Waistline
Original Caption Released with Image:
The Cassini spacecraft finds oddly-shaped Atlas gliding along the edge of the A ring. The moon has a prominent equatorial bulge, which is accentuated here by the grazing viewing angle of Cassini, making Atlas appear pointy.

Cassini images revealed in 2004 that a faint ring of material coincides with the orbit of Atlas (32 kilometers, or 20 miles across). See PIA06113 for more about "the Atlas ring."

This view looks upward, toward the lit side of Saturn's rings.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 30, 2006 at a distance of approximately 283,000 kilometers (176,000 miles) from Atlas. Image scale is 2 kilometers (1 mile) 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 operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Produced By:
Cassini Imaging Team
Mission:
Cassini
Spacecraft:
Cassini Orbiter
Target Name:
Atlas
Is a satellite of:
Saturn
Instrument:
Imaging Science Subsystem - Narrow Angle
Product Size:
1013 samples x 642 lines
Primary Data Set:
Cassini
facet_what:
Atlas
facet_what:
Moon
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_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
facet_where:
Saturn
facet_where:
California
facet_where:
Washington
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
facet_where:
Washington, D.C.
facet_when:
2004
facet_when:
June 30, 2006
facet_when_year:
2004
facet_when_year:
2006
Image #:
PIA08233
UID:
SPD-PHOTJ-PIA08233
orignial url:

Watching Atlas's Waistline