These figures show four propeller-shaped structures discovered by the
Cassini spacecraft in close-up images of Saturn's A ring.
The propellers are about 5 kilometers (3 miles) long from tip to tip, and
the radial offset (the "leading" dash is slightly closer to Saturn) is
about 300 meters (1,000 feet). See PIA07791 and PIA07792 for
additional images and information about these features.
The figures were cropped from two original Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle
camera images and magnified for visibility. The images were then
re-projected so that orbital motion is to the left and Saturn is up. The
unseen moonlets lie in the center of each structure. The figures were
cropped from two original Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera images,
taken during Saturn orbit insertion on July 1, 2004, and magnified for
visibility.
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.