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A crescent Saturn is blemished by a black spot of its moon Dione seen orbiting between the planet and the Cassini spacecraft. Although Dione appears as only a black dot, there is actually a thin crescent of lit terrain on the moon, just as there is on Saturn. However, the lit terrain on Dione is lost in front of the brilliant backdrop of Saturn. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. The image was taken in visible red light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Oct. 27, 2009. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 120 degrees. Image scale is 136 kilometers (84 miles) per pixel. |