In the Company of Dione

Dione
June 18, 2015
PIA NumberPIA17196
Language
  • english

NASA's Cassini imaging scientists processed this view of Saturn's moon Dione, taken during a close flyby on June 16, 2015. This was Cassini's fourth targeted flyby of Dione and the spacecraft had a close approach altitude of 321 miles (516 kilometers) from Dione's surface.

Also making an appearance in this image is Saturn's geysering moon Enceladus, seen in the upper right, just above the bright line of Saturn's rings.

North on Dione is up and rotated 44 degrees to the left. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera on June 16, 2015.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers) from Dione and at a sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 128 degrees. Image scale is 3 miles (5 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (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. 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, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov or http://www.nasa.gov/cassini . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute