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Rubble Moon?

May 3, 2005
Small and asteroid-like in appearance, Epimetheus is seen here with Saturn's nearly edge-on rings in the distance. This image was taken in visible light with NASA's Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera on March 12, 2005.

Small and asteroid-like in appearance, Epimetheus is seen here with Saturn's nearly edge-on rings in the distance. Epimetheus has a mean density that is less than that of water, suggesting that it might be somewhat porous. Epimetheus is 116 kilometers (72 miles) across.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 12, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 90 degrees. Resolution in the original image was 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel. 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.

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