Saturn's rings occupy the foreground of this image showing the small moon Janus above the rings and the planet's second largest moon, Rhea, partially obscured by the rings.
Janus is beyond the rings at a distance of about 1.1 million kilometers (684,000 miles) from Cassini. Rhea is 1.6 million kilometers (994,000 miles) from the spacecraft. This view looks toward the trailing hemisphere of Janus (179 kilometers, 111 miles across) and the Saturn-facing side of Rhea (1528 kilometers, 949 miles across).
This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 8, 2010. Image scale is 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel on Janus and 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel on Rhea.
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: May 28, 2010 (PIA 12643)
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PIA 12643
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