This computer animation shows the observations to be taken by the Cassini spacecraft spanning roughly a nine-hour period surrounding its upcoming flyby of Dione on Dec. 14, 2004. Cassini will pass within 81,400 kilometers (50,600 miles) of the icy moon. Red indicates observations to be taken in the infrared, white in the visible, and purple in the ultraviolet. Green indicates radar observations. The name of instrument team that designed each observation -- Imaging Science Subsystem, Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, Composite and Infrared Spectrometer, Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph and radar, is shown.

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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, 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 and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.