CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Cassini's Closest Views of Dione I

This two-in-one view of Dione from NASA's Cassini spacecraft includes the mission's highest-resolution view of the Saturnian moon's icy surface.

The view, from the spacecraft's wide-angle camera (WAC), includes an inset view, near center left, from the narrow-angle camera (NAC). The NAC view (also available here at its full resolution) shows features about 10 times smaller than the WAC view.

The wide-angle camera view has an image scale of about 105 feet (32 meters) per pixel; the narrow-angle camera view has an image scale of about 10 feet (3 meters) per pixel. Sunlight illuminates the scene from top. North on Dione is down. The views were acquired in visible light at an altitude of 334 miles (537 kilometers) above Dione.

The images were acquired simultaneously during a close flyby of the icy moon on Aug. 17, 2015. The views were obtained near the time of Cassini's closest approach to Dione during the encounter, like PIA19654. The NAC images in these two image releases are the highest resolution views of Dione's surface acquired by Cassini.

The Cassini Solstice Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. 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 was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini Solstice Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
Released: August 20, 2015 (PIA 19653)
Image/Caption Information 		  Cassini\'s Closest Views of Dione I
PIA 19653
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Cassini\'s Closest Views of Dione I
PIA 19653
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Alliance Member Comments
Robert (Aug 30, 2015 at 7:19 AM):
By my estimate, the smallest features I can see in the NAC image on my computer are about only 6 metres across! As amazing as that level of detail is on its own, it's even more amazing to me that Cassini captured that image while zipping along at almost 30,000 km per hour. I wonder if that's a speed to resolution record for a spacecraft?