Map of Dione – May 2008

This global map of Saturn's moon Dione was created using images taken during Cassini spacecraft flybys, with Voyager images filling in the gaps in Cassini's coverage.

An extensive system of bright ice cliffs created by tectonic fractures adorns the moon's trailing hemisphere.

The map is a simple cylindrical (equidistant) projection and has a scale of 614 meters (2,014 feet) per pixel at the equator. The mean radius of Dione used for projection of this map is 562 kilometers (349 miles). This updated map has been shifted west by 0.6 degrees of longitude, compared to the previously released Cassini product (Map of Dione - December 2006), in order to conform to the International Astronomical Union longitude system convention for Dione.

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

Related: Dione Detail Cartography