PIA06481: Herding the Rings
 Target Name:  Prometheus
 Is a satellite of:  Saturn
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  ISS - Narrow Angle
 Product Size:  452 x 680 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  CICLOPS/Space Science Institute
 Primary Data Set:  Cassini
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA06481.tif (125.4 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA06481.jpg (12.24 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:

Saturn's moon Prometheus is seen shepherding the inner edge of Saturn's F ring. Prometheus is 102 kilometers (63 miles) across and was captured in a close-up view by the Cassini spacecraft near the time of orbital insertion at Saturn (PIA06098). A number of clumps are visible here along the arcing F ring.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Aug. 5, 2004, at a distance of 8.2 million kilometers (5.1 million miles) from Saturn through a filter sensitive to visible green light. The image scale is 49 kilometers (33 miles) per pixel. Contrast was slightly enhanced to aid 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 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.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Image Addition Date:
2004-09-21