CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Rings In Between

Saturn's rings lie between a pair of moons in this Cassini view which features Mimas and Prometheus.

Mimas (246 miles across, 396 kilometers) is the more noticeable of the two moons and is in the top left of the view. The smaller moon Prometheus (53 miles, 86 kilometers across) is near the center of the image and is closest to Cassini. Mimas is beyond the rings and farthest from the spacecraft.

Lit terrain seen on Mimas is on the leading hemisphere of the moon. 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. 4, 2011. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 746,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Prometheus and 870,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) from Mimas. Image scale is 4 miles (7 kilometers) per pixel on Prometheus and 5 miles (8 kilometers) per pixel on Mimas.

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-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Released: December 5, 2011 (PIA 14585)
Image/Caption Information 		  Rings In Between
PIA 14585
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