Prometheus and Knots in the F Ring

Saturn's moon Prometheus is seen orbiting inside the planet's F-ring, which exhibits some of the knotted structure for which it is renowned. Near the center, separating the A and B rings is the famous Cassini division. The image was taken with the Cassini narrow angle camera on May 10, 2004, at a distance of 27 million kilometers (16.8 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 161 kilometers (100 miles) per pixel. Prometheus is 102 kilometers (63 miles) across. The image has been contrast-enhanced and magnified 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