Icy Crescent

As it departed its encounter with Saturn's moon Dione, Cassini sailed above an unreal landscape blasted by impacts. The rising Sun throws craters into sharp contrast and reveals steep crater walls.

At the far right, a medium-sized crater is bisected by a fracture, revealing a cross section of the impact site.

The seven clear-filter images in this mosaic were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 11, 2005, at distances ranging from of 21,650 to 25,580 kilometers (13,450 to 15,890 miles) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 154 degrees. Resolution in the original images ranges from 126 to 154 meters (413 to 505 feet) per pixel. The images have been re-sized to have an image scale of about 100 meters (330 feet) per pixel. North on Dione is 140 degrees to the left.

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 . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute