[新闻] 卡西尼号最新图片——光环中的卫星（9月24日）

Herding the Rings
09.21.04

Saturn's moon Prometheus is seen shepherding the inner edge of Saturn's F ring. Prometheus is 102 kilometers (63 miles) across and was captured in a close-up view by the Cassini spacecraft near the time of orbital insertion at Saturn (hot link to PIA06098). A number of clumps are visible here along the arcing F ring.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Aug. 5, 2004, at a distance of 8.2 million kilometers (5.1 million miles) from Saturn through a filter sensitive to visible green light. The image scale is 49 kilometers (33 miles) per pixel. Contrast was slightly enhanced to aid visibility.

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 Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.