Cassini eyes Janus

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2010/07/13 01:56 CDT

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Four times a year, the Cassini mission releases three months' worth of data gathered from Saturn and its moons to NASA's Planetary Data System. On July 1, there was another data release covering the period from July 1 to September 30, 2009. Gordan Ugarkovic wandered through the newly public data and produced several lovely images that he posted to his Flickr account, including this global view of Janus.

NASA / JPL / SSI / color composite by Gordan Ugarkovic

Janus

Cassini gazed at Janus (193 by 173 by 137 kilometers in diameter) from a distance of 96,000 kilometers on July 26, 2009 to capture this natural-color, global view; even the night side is faintly illuminated by light reflected from Saturn or the rings. Janus is the larger of a pair of moons that share an orbit around Saturn; its partner is Epimetheus.