Moons on the Move

Titan emerges from behind Saturn, while Tethys streaks into view.
March 24, 2008
PIA NumberPIA09864
Language
  • english

Titan emerges from behind Saturn, while Tethys streaks into view, in this colorful scene. Saturn's shadow darkens the far arm of the rings near the planet's limb.

Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) wide; Tethys is 1,071 kilometers (665 miles) wide.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 3 degrees above the ringplane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 30, 2008 at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 77 kilometers (48 miles) per pixel on Saturn.

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