Saucer-shaped Pan glides through the Encke Gap in Saturn's rings.
See PIA08405 for higher resolution views of the "saucer moons" Pan (28 kilometers, 17 miles across) and Atlas (30 kilometers, 19 miles across).
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 20 degrees below the ringplane.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 10, 2008 at a distance of approximately 799,000 kilometers (496,000 miles) from Pan. Image scale is 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini Equinox Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. 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 was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. 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 Equinox Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: July 22, 2008 (PIA 10430)
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PIA 10430
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