PDS logoPlanetary Data System
PDS Information
Find a Node - Use these links to navigate to any of the 8 publicly accessible PDS Nodes.

This bar indicates that you are within the PDS enterprise which includes 6 science discipline nodes and 2 support nodes which are overseen by the Project Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Each node is led by an expert in the subject discipline, supported by an advisory group of other practitioners of that discipline, and subject to selection and approval under a regular NASA Research Announcement.
Click here to return to the Photojournal Home Page Click here to view a list of Photojournal Image Galleries Photojournal_inner_header
Latest Images  |  Spacecraft & Technology  |  Animations  |  Space Images App  |  Feedback  |  Photojournal Search  

PIA06486: Hyperion From Afar
NASA's Cassini spacecraft caught this glimpse of Hyperion as the moon tumbled chaotically in its orbit around Saturn.
 Target Name:  Hyperion
 Is a satellite of:  Saturn
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens 
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  ISS - Narrow Angle 
 Product Size:  300 x 300 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  CICLOPS/Space Science Institute 
 Primary Data Set:  Cassini 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA06486.tif (13.03 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA06486.jpg (1.562 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:

Cassini caught this glimpse of Hyperion as the moon tumbled chaotically in its orbit around Saturn. Hyperion is a heavily cratered moon, and in this image it shows a dark spot that may be one of its many large craters. Hyperion's diameter is 266 kilometers (156 miles).

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on September 12, 2004, at a distance of 8.8 million kilometers (5.4 million miles) from Hyperion and at a Sun-Hyperion-spacecraft or phase, angle of 90 degrees. The image scale is 53 kilometers (33 miles) per pixel. The image was magnified by a factor of four 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:
2004-09-28