Saturn-lit Surface

the moon Dione
April 13, 2005
PIA NumberPIA06626
Language
  • english

This Cassini image shows the night side of Saturn's moon Dione, dimly lit by "Saturnshine": that
is, reflected light from the planet lying off to the left in Cassini's field of view when this image
was taken. Dione is 1,118 kilometers (695 miles) across.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on
Feb. 18, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (808,000 miles) from Dione
and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 118 degrees. The image scale is 8 kilometers (5
miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, 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, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed,
developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute,
Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . For
additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute