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A Glimpse of Atlas

Saturn's little moon Atlas orbits Saturn between the outer edge of the A ring and the fascinating, twisted F ring. This image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft just barely resolves the disk of Atlas.
PIA06659
Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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Description

Saturn's little moon Atlas orbits Saturn between the outer edge of the A ring and the fascinating, twisted F ring. This image just barely resolves the disk of Atlas, and also shows some of the knotted structure for which the F ring is known. Atlas is 32 kilometers (20 miles) across.

The bright outer edge of the A ring is overexposed here, but farther down the image several bright ring features can be seen.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 25, 2005, at a distance of approximately 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Atlas and at a Sun-Atlas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 60 degrees. Resolution in the original image was 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel.