Cassini Views a Lonely Moon of Saturn

Cassini Views Pandora

Saturn’s moon Pandora is near the upper right. Two faint ringlets are visible within the Encke Gap, near the lower left. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

This new Cassini image shows Saturn’s moon Pandora in isolation beside Saturn’s kinked and constantly changing F ring.

Pandora (near upper right) is 50 miles (81 kilometers) wide. The moon has an elongated, potato-like shape.

Two faint ringlets are visible within the Encke Gap, near the lower left. The gap is about 202 miles (325 kilometers) wide. The much narrower Keeler Gap, which lies outside the Encke Gap, is maintained by the diminutive moon Daphnis (not seen here).

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 23 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on August 12, 2016.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 907,000 miles (1.46 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 113 degrees. The image scale is 6 miles (9 kilometers) per pixel.

Be the first to comment on "Cassini Views a Lonely Moon of Saturn"

Leave a comment

Email address is optional. If provided, your email will not be published or shared.