CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Pan and Janus

Pan and Janus
PIA 10475
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   Two of Saturn's moons coast along the outer edge of the main ring system. A total of seven small moons cluster around this region, between the orbits of Pan and the co-orbital moons Janus and Epimetheus.

Pan (28 kilometers, 17 miles across) appears as a bright dot within the Encke Gap, right of center. Janus (179 kilometers, 111 miles across) lies outside the A and F rings, below center.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 2 degrees below the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 22, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (808,000 miles) from Janus. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini Equinox 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 Equinox Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: September 23, 2008 (PIA 10475)
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