Hyperion’s Face

The rugged surface of Saturn's irregular tumbling moon Hyperion is revealed in this Cassini image. Hyperion is 266 kilometers (165 miles) across.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 23, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.7 million kilometers (1 million miles) from Hyperion and at a Sun-Hyperion-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 42 degrees. Resolution in the original image was 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of three 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 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 .