Two F Ring Views

Two views of the F ring, Janus and Prometheus
August 5, 2005
PIA NumberPIA07558
Language
  • english

These views, taken two hours apart, demonstrate the dramatic variability in the structure of Saturn's intriguing F ring.

In the image at the left, ringlets in the F ring and Encke Gap display distinctive kinks, and there is a bright patch of material on the F ring's inner edge. Saturn's moon Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across) is shown here, partly illuminated by reflected light from the planet.

At the right, Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across) orbits ahead of the radial striations in the F ring, called "drapes" by scientists. The drapes appear to be caused by successive passes of Prometheus as it reaches the greatest distance (apoapse) in its orbit of Saturn. Also in this image, the outermost ringlet visible in the Encke Gap displays distinctive bright patches.

These views were obtained from about three degrees below the ring plane.

The images were taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 29, 2005, when Cassini was about 1.5 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Saturn. The image scale is about 9 kilometers (6 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