Groovy Rings and Moons

The multitude of grooves for which Saturn's rings are famed, clumps in the F ring, and three Saturnian moons are visible in this image. Moons visible in the image are: Mimas (398 kilometers or 247 miles across) above the rings at left; Epimetheus (116 kilometers or 72 miles across) just above the A ring; Enceladus (499 kilometers or 310 miles across) near upper right. The image was taken with the Cassini narrow angle camera on May 10, 2004, at a distance of 27.1 million kilometers (16.8 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 162 kilometers (101 miles) per pixel. Contrast in the image was enhanced to aid visibility.

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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, 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 and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org .

Image Credit:

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute