Saturn's rings, Mimas, Pan, and Prometheus

Filed under pretty pictures, amateur image processing, Saturn's rings, Mimas, Saturn's small moons, Cassini

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Saturn's rings, Mimas, Pan, and Prometheus

This view of the sunlit (southern) side of Saturn's rings was captured by Cassini on October 3, 2007, a week before its one and only encounter with Iapetus. Five separate pointings of Cassini's narrow-angle camera were necessary to produce this approximate true-color view, assembled from the calibrated mission data by Gordan Ugarkovic.

NASA / JPL / SSI / color mosaic by Gordan Ugarkovic

Mimas is the bright speck above the rings, with its giant crater Herschel clearly visible upon enlargement. Near the left ansa (edge) of the rings, tiny Pan orbits within the narrow Encke gap. And, below the main rings, potato-shaped Prometheus sits atop the very faint F ring. Pan and Prometheus are only visible when the image is enlarged to its full size.

Copyright holder: Gordan Ugarkovic

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 October 3, 2007