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Pretty picture: Saturn, a big moon, and a teeny one

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2012/01/09 11:23 CST

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Here's a lovely recent view from Cassini of Saturn with its largest moon (Titan) and one of its teeny ringmoons (Prometheus, which is a little dot at the top of the rings on the right). The rings cast shadows on Saturn's southern hemisphere. The B ring casts a much darker shadow than the A ring because much of the B ring is packed so densely with large particles that it is opaque to sunlight. The A ring casts a paler shadow because its particles are separated enough that it's translucent. The color looks a bit monochromatic because it's only emulating true color -- the two images used to compose it were taken through filters in infrared wavelengths.

NASA / JPL / SSI / color composite by Gordan Ugarkovic

Saturn, Titan, and Prometheus

Cassini captured this view of Saturn with Titan and Prometheus with its wide-angle camera on January 5, 2011 at about 08:00 UTC. Titan is on the far side of Saturn from Cassini, more than 1,800,000 kilometers away; Prometheus is much closer, only about 500,000 kilometers away. The different distances exaggerate Prometheus' size with respect to Titan. In fact, Titan is roughly 30 times Prometheus' diameter.