JPL: Behold the Violent History of Saturn's White Whale Moon

[bystander]

Behold the Violent History of Saturn's White Whale Moon
NASA JPL 2010-057 - 2010 Feb 19

Like the battered white whale Moby Dick taunting Captain Ahab, Saturn's moon Prometheus surges toward the viewer in a 3-D image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

The image exposes the irregular shape and circular surface scars on Prometheus, pointing to a violent history. These craters are probably the remnants from impacts long ago.

Prometheus is one of Saturn's innermost moons. It orbits the gas-giant at a distance of about 140,000 kilometers (86,000 miles) and is 86 kilometers (53 miles) across at its widest point. The porous, icy world was originally discovered in images taken by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft back in 1980.

PIA12548: Prometheus Popping in 3-D (2010 Feb 19)

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/Cassini

[neufer]

• • _Moby Dick; or, The Whale_ Chapter 79 - The Prairie
  <<Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you can.>>

[bystander]

PIA 12548: Prometheus Popping in 3-D (2010 Feb 19)

Saturn's potato-shaped moon Prometheus is rendered in three dimensions in this close-up from Cassini.

This 3-D view is a color composite picture made from two different black and white images that were taken from slightly different viewing angles. The images are combined so that the viewer's left and right eye, respectively and separately, see a left and right image of the black and white stereo pair when viewed through red-blue glasses.

This view looks toward the leading hemisphere of Prometheus (86 kilometers, 53 miles across). North on Prometheus is up and rotated 47 degrees to the right. The end of Prometheus on the lower right points toward Saturn, and the end on the upper left points away from the planet.

The images were taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 26, 2009. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 57,000 kilometers (35,000 miles) from Prometheus and at a Sun-Prometheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 33 degrees. Image scale is 339 meters (1,111 feet) per pixel.