Again, absolutely marvelous pictures of two moons of Saturn: Pan and Dione.
Pan is seen in this color view as it sweeps through the Encke Gap with its attendant ringlets. As the lemon-shaped little moon orbits Saturn, it always keeps its long axis pointed along a line toward the planet. From this vantage point, the dark side of the moon is visible.
This view looks toward Pan (26 kilometers, 16 miles across) within the Encke Gap (325 kilometers, 200 miles wide), on the unlit side of the rings, and from an inclination of about 33 degrees above the ringplane.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 16, 2006 at a distance of approximately 779,000 kilometers (484,000 miles) from Pan and at a Sun-Pan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 83 degrees. Image scale is 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.
Canyons and mountain peaks snake along the terminator on the crater-covered, icy moon Dione. With the Sun at a low angle on their local horizon, the line of mountain ridges above center casts shadows toward the east.
Sunlit terrain seen here is on the anti-Saturn hemisphere of Dione (1,126 kilometers, 700 miles across)–the side that always faces away from Saturn. North is up.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 15, 2006 at a distance of approximately 299,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 81 degrees. Image scale is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel.
