CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Tethys the Target

Tethys the Target
PIA 18317
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   Like most moons in the solar system, Tethys is covered by impact craters. Some craters bear witness to incredibly violent events, such as the crater Odysseus (seen here at the right of the image).

While Tethys is 660 miles (1,062 kilometers) across, the crater Odysseus is 280 miles (450 kilometers) across, covering about 4.5 percent of the moon's surface area. A comparably sized crater on Earth would be larger than Russia!

This view looks toward the anti-Saturn hemisphere of Tethys. North on Tethys is up and rotated 42 degrees to the right. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 11, 2015.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 118,000 miles (190,000 kilometers) from Tethys. Image scale is 3,280 feet (1 kilometer) per pixel.

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: June 8, 2015 (PIA 18317)
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