PIA12777: Eye Toward Aegaeon
 Target Name:  S Rings
 Is a satellite of:  Saturn
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  ISS - Narrow Angle
 Product Size:  1016 x 499 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Cassini Imaging Team

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:

The Cassini spacecraft looks toward Saturn's tiny moon Aegaeon within the G-ring arc.

The moonlet Aegaeon (formerly known as S/2008 S 1) can't be seen in this image, but it orbits in the bright arc of Saturn's faint G ring shown here. See PIA11148 to learn more.

Many background stars are visibly elongated by the motion of the spacecraft during the image's exposure. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 4, 2011. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 2.5 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 14 kilometers (9 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 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. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Image Addition Date:
2011-08-01