CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Daybreak on Dione

Daybreak on Dione
PIA 06638
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   The Sun also rises on Dione (1,123 kilometers, 698 miles across), seen in this image from Cassini. Wispy fractured terrain lies along the limb. Some details of the moon's topography can be noted along the terminator.

This image is centered on territory at 310 degrees west longitude. The sunlit region in this view is on the trailing hemisphere on Dione. North is up and tilted 23 degrees to the left.

The image was taken with the narrow angle camera on March 12, 2005, through spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized green light. The view was acquired from a distance of approximately 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 100 degrees. Resolution in the original image was 10 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of two to aid visibility.

[Caption updated on October 4, 2005.]

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. 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-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: April 29, 2005 (PIA 06638)
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