PIA10541: Pan's Ringlet
 Target Name:  Pan
 Is a satellite of:  Saturn
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  ISS - Narrow Angle
 Product Size:  1016 x 1016 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Cassini Imaging Team
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA10541.tif (1.034 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA10541.jpg (95.56 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:

Pan orbits in the Encke gap near the middle of this image.

Also visible is one of the three dusty ringlets that reside in the Encke gap.

Near the top of the image, the F ring puts in an appearance as well.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 5, 2008 at a distance of approximately 1.309 million kilometers (813,000 miles) from Pan and at a Sun-Pan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 32 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 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/Space Science Institute

Image Addition Date:
2008-12-24