PIA 07516
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From a viewing angle slightly above the ringplane Cassini spied Atlas (30 kilometers, 19 miles across), which orbits Saturn between the broad A ring and the thin F ring. The background of Saturn’s atmosphere (a uniform grey in this image) lies approximately 76,000 kilometers (47,000 miles) beyond the little moon.
When viewed from the dark (unlit) side, the rings are essentially an inverse of their familiar appearance (see PIA06529 and PIA06548 to compare the different views).
This image was taken in visible light with the narrow angle camera on February 18, 2005, from a distance of approximately 914,000 kilometers (568,000 miles) from Atlas. Resolution in the original image was 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of two 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 Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in 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.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: June 10, 2005 (PIA 07516)
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