Cassini's Photo Album From a Season of Icy Moons
False-color views of Saturn's cratered, icy moons, Rhea and Dione. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute+ Full image and caption
+ More images
December 06, 2005
Wrapping up a phenomenally successful year of observing Saturn's
icy moons, the Cassini mission is releasing a flood of new views of
the moons Enceladus, Dione, Rhea, Hyperion and Iapetus.
The moons and their intricacies are being highlighted at a news briefing
today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
Several new images of Rhea, a moon measuring 1,528 kilometers (949 miles)
across, were taken during Cassini's most recent close flyby on November 26.
During the encounter, Cassini dipped to within 500 kilometers (310 miles)
of Rhea's surface.
Additional new images include two "zoomable" mosaics of Rhea and Hyperion
at high resolution; false-color views revealing compositional variation on
the surfaces of Hyperion, Dione and Rhea; two movies reproducing Cassini's
exciting encounters with Iapetus and Hyperion; and dazzling new images of
the plumes of Enceladus, including a time-lapse movie.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a
division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the
Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed
and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
The image products being released include large mosaics, movies and false-color
views. They are available at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov ,
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://ciclops.org .
Carolina Martinez (818) 354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Preston Dyches (720) 974-5859
Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations
Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo
2005-172
