Smooth Telesto

The smooth surface of Saturn's moon Telesto is documented in this image captured during the Cassini spacecraft's Aug. 27, 2009, flyby.

See PIA07696 to learn more about Telesto's lack of craters.

This view looks toward the leading hemisphere of Telesto (25 kilometers, or 16 miles across). North on the moon is up and rotated 3 degrees to the right.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 36,000 kilometers (22,000 miles) from Telesto and at a sun-Telesto-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 48 degrees. Image scale is 214 meters (702 feet) per pixel.

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 operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.