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HomeNewsCassini Presents Saturn Moon Quintet

Cassini Presents Saturn Moon Quintet

Written by Rosemary Sullivant
Jet Propulsion Laboratory

NASA - National Aeronautics and Space AdministrationPasadena, CA – With the artistry of a magazine cover shoot, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this portrait of five of Saturn’s moons poised along the planet’s rings.

From left to right are Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas and finally Rhea, bisected by the right side of the frame. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 684,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) from Rhea and 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Enceladus.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captures five of Saturn's moons in one image: Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas and Rhea. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. Rhea is closest to Cassini here. The rings are beyond Rhea and Mimas. Enceladus is beyond the rings. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
NASA's Cassini spacecraft captures five of Saturn's moons in one image: Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas and Rhea. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. Rhea is closest to Cassini here. The rings are beyond Rhea and Mimas. Enceladus is beyond the rings. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 29th, 2011. Image scale is about 4 miles (7 kilometers) per pixel on Rhea and 7 miles (11 kilometers) per pixel on Enceladus.

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 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, CO.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

For more news and images via social media, follow Cassini on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cassinisaturn .

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