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PIA08171: Is That a Moon?
 Target Name:  S Rings
 Is a satellite of:  Saturn
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  ISS - Narrow Angle
 Product Size:  1021 x 624 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Cassini Imaging Team
 Primary Data Set:  Cassini
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA08171.tif (638 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA08171.jpg (39.51 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:

This splendid view offers a detailed look at the faint rings within the Cassini Division as well as a rare glimpse of the Keeler gap moon, Daphnis. The small, ring embedded moon is a bright unresolved speck above center, near the outer edge of the A ring.

Discovered in Cassini images in 2005, Daphnis is a mere 7 kilometers (4 miles) across.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 20, 2006, at a distance of approximately 483,000 kilometers (300,000 miles) from Saturn. The image scale on the sky at the distance of Daphnis is about 2 kilometers (1 mile) 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/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Image Addition Date:
2006-05-04