Saturn’s moon Dione drifts before the planet’s rings, seen here almost edge-on. For all their immense width, the rings are relatively paper-thin, about 30 feet (10 meters) in most places. For its part, Dione is about 698 miles (1,123 kilometers) across.
This natural-color view was obtained on August 17, 2015, with Cassini’s wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 66,200 miles (106,500 kilometers) from Dione.
The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on September 15, 2017.
The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
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