CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Helene of Troy

Helene of Troy
PIA 09015
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   Cassini reveals details on the surface of small, irregularly shaped Helene in this close-up view, obtained during the spacecraft's closest encounter with this moon during its four-year primary mission.

Helene (33 kilometers, 21 miles across) is a Trojan moon, sharing Dione's orbit but staying 60 degrees or 400,000 kilometers (250,000 miles) ahead of the much larger moon.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 20, 2007. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 39,000 kilometers (24,000 miles) from Helene and at a Sun-Helene-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 61 degrees. Image scale is 231 meters (758 feet) 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: August 28, 2007 (PIA 09015)
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