Anthe's Faint Arc
Date: 5 Sep 2008

Cassini images reveal the existence of a faint arc of material orbiting with Saturn's small moon Anthe.


The moon is moving in a counterclockwise direction in this perspective, and it is about to reach the ansa -- the point of maximum elongation -- as seen by the viewer, in its curving path around Saturn.


In this image, most of the visible material in the arc lies ahead of Anthe (2 km, or 1 mile across) in its orbit. However, over time the moon drifts slowly back and forth with respect to the arc. Also ahead of the moon is a dark channel where the arc appears split into two strands, and these then merge farther around the orbital path. The arc extends over about 20 degrees in longitude (about 5.5 percent of Anthe's orbit) and appears to be associated with a gravitational resonance caused by Mimas. Micrometeoroid impacts on Anthe are the likely source of the arc material. The orbit of Anthe lies between the larger moons Mimas and Enceladus. Anthe shares this region with two other small moons, Pallene (4 km, or 3 miles across) and Methone (3 km, or 2 miles across). Methone also possesses an arc, while Pallene is known to orbit within a faint, complete ring of its own.


Cassini imaging scientists believe the process that maintains the Anthe and Methone arcs is similar to that which maintains the arc in the G ring.


The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on 4 April 2008. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.2 million km (746,000 miles) from Anthe and at a sun-Anthe-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 23 degrees. Image scale is 7 km (4 miles) per pixel. This view looks toward the un-illuminated side of the rings from about 3 degrees above the ringplane. The view has been rotated so that Saturn's north pole would point upward. The general brightness of the image (along with the faint horizontal and vertical banding pattern) results from the long exposure time of 32 seconds required to capture the extremely faint ring arc and the processing needed to enhance its visibility (which also enhances the digital background noise in the image). The image was digitally processed to remove most of the background noise. The long exposure also produced star trails in the background.


Last Update: 1 Apr 2011 (AMB)

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute