CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Brush with Epimetheus

Cassini continues to survey the small worlds that orbit near Saturn's rings, capturing this view of Epimetheus (113 kilometers, 70 miles across). The moon's lumpy, irregular topography can be seen here, along with several impact craters. PIA 06226 shows a closer view of Epimetheus, taken from a different viewing angle.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 20, 2005, at a distance of approximately 345,000 kilometers (214,000 miles) from Epimetheus and at a Sun-Epimetheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 26 degrees. Resolution in the original image was 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel. The view was magnified by a factor of two and contrast-enhanced to aid visibility of the moon's surface.

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 Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. 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-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: June 29, 2005 (PIA 07531)
Image/Caption Information 		  Brush with Epimetheus
PIA 07531
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