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Examining Epimetheus

Saturn's moon Epimetheus
NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured this view of Saturn's moon Epimetheus.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this view of Saturn’s moon Epimetheus (116 kilometers, or 72 miles across) during a moderately close flyby on Dec. 6, 2015. This is one of Cassini’s highest resolution views of the small moon, along with PIA09813.

This view looks toward the Saturn facing side of Epimetheus. North on Epimetheus is up. The image was taken in green polarized light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 22,000 miles (35,000 kilometers) from Epimetheus and at a Sun-Epimetheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 28 degrees. Image scale is 697 feet (212 meters) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (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 mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and https://www.nasa.gov/cassini. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Image Credit:

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute