CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Pan in Action

Saturn's small, ring-embedded moon Pan, on the extreme right of this Cassini image, can be seen interacting with the ringlets that share the Encke Gap of the A ring with this moon.

Pan is 28 kilometers, or 17 miles, across. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from about 11 degrees above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 2, 2010. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 875,000 kilometers (544,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 130 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: August 4, 2010 (PIA 12691)
Image/Caption Information 		  Pan in Action
PIA 12691
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