This image reveals the odd shape of Saturn's moon Hyperion and an intriguing variation in brightness across its surface. The diameter of Hyperion is 266 kilometers (165 miles).
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Oct. 20, 2004, at a distance of about 2.2 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Hyperion and at a Sun-Hyperion-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 50 degrees. The image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
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 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 and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org .
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
