CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Catching Helene

Although travelling at great speed, Cassini managed to capture this close view of Saturn's small moon Helene during a flyby on March 3, 2010.

Saturn's atmosphere makes up the background of this composition. See PIA12653 for another image taken during this closest flyby of Helene.

This view looks toward the anti-Saturn side of Helene (33 kilometers, 21 miles across). North on Helene is up and rotated 44 degrees to the right.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 19,000 kilometers (12,000 miles) from Helene and at a Sun-Helene-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 25 degrees. Image scale is 113 meters (370 feet) 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 17, 2010 (PIA 12723)
Image/Caption Information 		  Catching Helene
PIA 12723
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