Atlas can be seen just above the center of this Cassini image as the moon orbits in the Roche Division between Saturn's A ring and thin F ring.
See PIA08405 for closer views of Atlas (30 kilometers, 19 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 12, 2010. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Atlas. Image scale is 13 kilometers (8 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: June 1, 2010 (PIA 12645)
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PIA 12645
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