Resonance Moon and Rings

The rings share this view with Mimas, a moon whose gravity influences the rings.

To learn more about Mimas' gravitational influences, or resonances, see Perturbed Edge and Splendid Striations. Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles across) was overexposed in this image and has been dimmed by a factor of four relative to the rest of the image.

This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from about 9 degrees above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 7, 2009. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 2.9 million kilometers (1.8 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 17 kilometers (11 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 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