PHOTO: Five of Saturn’s Moons Captured with 'Artistry' in One Image
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured a portrait of five of Saturn’s moons poised along the planet’s ring in one image, NASA revealed on Friday.
The five moons are Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas and Rhea, which according to the space agency have been portrayed “with the artistry of a magazine cover shoot.”
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
Cassini spacecraft captured the amazing view of the five moons 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.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 29, 2011, NASA said, while revealing the picture for the first time on Sept. 16.
A quintet of Saturn's moons come together in the Cassini spacecraft's field of view for this portrait above. Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles across) is on the far left. Pandora (81 kilometers, or 50 miles across) orbits between the A ring and the thin F ring near the middle of the image. Brightly reflective Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) appears above the center of the image. Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across), is bisected by the right edge of the image. The smaller moon Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles across) can be seen beyond Rhea also on the right side of the image.
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