PIA08311: Toying with Gravity
 Target Name:  Prometheus
 Is a satellite of:  Saturn
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  ISS - Narrow Angle
 Product Size:  464 x 464 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Cassini Imaging Team
 Primary Data Set:  Cassini
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA08311.tif (215.8 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA08311.jpg (14.35 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This view, like PIA08303, shows Prometheus with a streamer it has created in the inner edge of the F ring. Prometheus comes close to the inner edge of the ring once per orbit, perturbing the ring particles there. In 2009, the moon's orbit is expected to carry it repeatedly into the F ring core, an event that ring scientists are eagerly awaiting.

Prometheus is 102 kilometers (63 miles) across. This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 40 degrees above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 16, 2006 at a distance of approximately 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Prometheus and at a Sun-Prometheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 150 degrees. Scale in the original image was 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two.

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 operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Image Addition Date:
2006-11-16