CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
A Dead Giveaway

Edge waves in the Keeler Gap betray the presence of the embedded moon Daphnis.

Though Cassini cannot see Daphnis (8 kilometers, 5 miles across) in this image (because the spacecraft is looking at its dark side), the tiny moon is undoubtedly located right of center, where the inner edge waves cease and the outer waves begin. The little moon was discovered in Cassini images that revealed its signature waves in the Keeler gap (42 kilometers, 26 miles wide).

At left lies the brilliant F ring with its flanking strands. The bright F ring core is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) wide.

This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 32 degrees above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 29, 2006 at a distance of approximately 1.7 million kilometers (1 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 157 degrees. Image scale is about 10 kilometers (6 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 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: October 31, 2006 (PIA 08299)
Image/Caption Information 		  A Dead Giveaway
PIA 08299
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