Helene in color

Filed under pretty pictures, global views, amateur image processing, Saturn's moons, Saturn's small moons, Cassini

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Cassini captured this natural-color view of Helene on June 18, 2011.

NASA / JPL / SSI / color composite by Daniel Macháček

Strangely shaped Helene is the leading co-orbital companion of Saturn's second-largest moon, Rhea. Cassini flew past it on June 18, 2011, acquiring numerous images from a range of phase angles. This image was taken from a distance of 7,000 kilometers and has a resolution of about 42 meters per pixel. It is an approximately natural color view composed of red-, green-, and blue-filter images.

The co-orbital moons appear to collect lots of fine dust. In Helene's case, this fine dust has cascaded downhill to fill local topographic lows that likely originated as craters. More resistant material juts above the dusty slopes.

Copyright holder: Daniel Macháček

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about June 18, 2011