CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Not-So-Dark Side of Tethys

The huge Odysseus Crater is clearly illuminated by the sun on the western limb of Tethys, but Saturn shining from the right makes the smaller craters on the eastern part of the moon also visible.

The ancient Odysseus Crater is 450 kilometers, or 280 miles, across and covers a sizable chunk of the moon. North on Tethys (1062 kilometers, 660 miles across) is up and rotated 31 degrees to the left. This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of the moon.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 22, 2009. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 793,000 kilometers (493,000 miles) from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 112 degrees. Image scale is 5 kilometers (3 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: March 12, 2009 (PIA 10597)
Image/Caption Information 		  Not-So-Dark Side of Tethys
PIA 10597
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