Cassini: Closest Dione Flyby

[bystander]

NASA JPL-Caltech | Cassini Solstice Mission | CICLOPS | 2012 Jan 16

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Closest Dione Flyby

Flying past Saturn's moon Dione, Cassini captured this view which includes two smaller moons, Epimetheus and Prometheus, near the planet's rings.

The image was taken in visible light with Cassini's narrow-angle camera during the spacecraft's flyby of Dione on Dec. 12, 2011. This encounter was the spacecraft's closest pass of the moon's surface, but, because this flyby was intended primarily for other Cassini instruments, it did not yield Cassini's best images of the moon. Higher resolution images were obtained during earlier flybys (see At Carthage Linea).

Dione (698 miles, or 1,123 kilometers across) is closest to Cassini here and is on the left of the image. Potato-shaped Prometheus (53 miles, or 86 kilometers across) appears above the rings near the center top of the image. Epimetheus (70 miles, or 113 kilometers across) is on the right.

This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from less than one degree above the ring plane. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers) from Dione. Image scale is 2,122 feet (647 meters) per pixel on Dione.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

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[owlice]

Oooooooooooohhhhh!!!!!! That's magnificent!!

[Ann]

As usual, when it comes to Cassini images of the Saturn system, the images won't open for me.

Ann

[bystander]

There are 3 different links and none of them work for you?

[Ann]

I didn't check the links. When I opened the page you posted, my computer got "locked" in a "trying to load" mode, and I didn't think of checking the links. Now that you told me, I finally did. The two first links didn't work, but the third one did.

Yes, that's a splendid image!

Ann