mercredi 15 février 2012

Rhea Before Titan












NASA / ESA - Cassini Mission to Saturn patch.

Feb. 15, 2012


Craters appear well defined on icy Rhea in front of the hazy orb of the much larger moon Titan in this Cassini spacecraft view of these two Saturn moons.

Lit terrain seen here is on the leading hemispheres of Rhea and Titan. North on the moons is up and rotated 13 degrees to the left. The limb, or edge of the visible disk, of Rhea is slightly overexposed in this view.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 10, 2011. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.2 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 109 degrees. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 810,000 miles (1.3 million kilometers) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 109 degrees. Image scale is 8 miles (12 kilometers) per pixel on Titan and 5 miles (8 kilometers) per pixel on Rhea.

For more information about Cassini Mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html and http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Cassini-Huygens/

Image, Text, Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch