CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Charting Atlas' Path

Saturn's moon Atlas, just below the center of this image, orbits in the Roche Division between the A ring and thin F ring.

See PIA08405 for higher resolution views of Atlas (30 kilometers, 19 miles across). This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 23, 2009. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles) from Atlas. Image scale is 9 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: March 23, 2010 (PIA 12595)
Image/Caption Information 		  Charting Atlas' Path
PIA 12595
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