Ice Orbs

March 3, 2005

In this unusual view, NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured two icy moons of Saturn, Tethys and Enceladus, in a single narrow-angle frame.

In this unusual view, Cassini captured two icy moons of Saturn, Tethys and Enceladus, in a single narrow-angle frame. Little detail is visible on the surface of bright Enceladus, but battered Tethys shows many craters and the huge canyon system, Ithaca Chasma. Tethys has a diameter of 1,071 kilometers (665 miles) across, while Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) across.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 29, 2005, at a distance of approximately 3.7 million kilometers (2.3 million miles) from Tethys and 3.5 million kilometers (2.2 million miles) from Enceladus. Resolution in the original image was 22 kilometers (14 miles) per pixel on Tethys and 21 kilometers (13 miles) per pixel on Enceladus. The image has been contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of two to aid visibility.

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 mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. 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.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

Ice Orbs

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