Cassini's Farewell to Jupiter

On Jan. 15, 2001, 17 days after making its closest approach to Jupiter, NASA's Cassini spacecraft looked back to see the giant planet as a thinning crescent. This image is a color mosaic from that day, shot from a distance of 11.4 million miles(18.3 million kilometers). A crescent Io, innermost of Jupiter's four large moons, appears to the left of Jupiter. Cassini collected its last Jupiter images on March 22, 2001, as the spacecraft continued the final leg of its journey to a July 1, 2004, appointment with Saturn.