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Methone

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

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Methone Methone is a small (3-kilometer) moon of Saturn that orbits between Mimas and Enceladus near Anthe and Pallene. Cassini captured high-resolution views of it on May 20, 2012.

NASA / JPL / SSI / Phil Stooke

The moon is unusually smooth for such a small object. This version was produced from raw image data by Phil Stooke, who cleaned up cosmic ray hits, enlarged it by a factor of two, and adjusted brightness and contrast. There are clear albedo (brightness) variations across its surface.

Copyright holder: Phil Stooke

Creative Commons License
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 May 20, 2012

Comments:

veloopity: 06/21/2012 01:36 CDT

I wonder if there is a detailed map of the Saturn system where one can find all those tiny worlds that I never heard of before

veloopity: 06/21/2012 01:37 CDT

and of course, I am reminded by that great Asimov novel from 1950, "Pebble in the Sky"

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