CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Rings, Rhea and Telesto

Rings, Rhea and Telesto
PIA 12736
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   This Cassini composition features Saturn's rings, its second largest moon, Rhea, and one of the planet's tiny moons, Telesto.

Rhea (1528 kilometers, 949 miles across) is on the right. Telesto (25 kilometers, 16 miles across) is near the middle of the image and appears as a bright speck. Saturn's rings are at the top of the image. The rings and Telesto have been brightened by a factor 1.6 relative to Rhea.

This view looks toward the southern, unilluminated side of the rings from just below the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 5, 2010. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.6 million kilometers (994,000 miles) from Telesto and 1.9 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) from Rhea. Image scale is 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel on Telesto and 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Rhea.

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

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: October 18, 2010 (PIA 12736)
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