Cassini Image of Prometheus and Pandora Hidden in Saturn’s Rings

Cassini Views Prometheus and Pandora

Prometheus and Pandora orbit along side Saturn’s narrow F ring. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

This newly released Cassini image shows Prometheus and Pandora hidden in Saturn’s rings.

Prometheus (53 miles or 86 kilometers across) and Pandora (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) orbit along side Saturn’s narrow F ring, which is shaped, in part, by their gravitational influences help to shape that ring. Their proximity to the rings also means that they often lie on the same line of sight as the rings, sometimes making them difficult to spot.

In this image, Prometheus is the left most moon in the ring plane, roughly in the center of the image. Pandora is towards the right.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 0.3 degrees below the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 6, 2015.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 994,000 miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Prometheus and at a Sun-Prometheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 106 degrees. Image scale is 6 miles (10 kilometers) per pixel.

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