Contact: Preston Dyches
preston@ciclops.org
720-974-5859
Space Science Institute

Dione: Magnified View

Caption: This close-up of Dione's icy surface shows deeply shadowed craters near the terminator, as well as a group of roughly linear faults above center.

The terrain shown here is on the moon's leading hemisphere. North on Dione (1,126 kilometers, 700 miles across) is up and tilted 21 degrees to the right.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 24, 2005 at a distance of approximately 152,000 kilometers (94,000 miles) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 109 degrees. Resolution in the original image was 904 meters (2,965 feet) per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two and contrast-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 imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Credit: Cassini Imaging Team & NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Usage Restrictions: Image is in the public domain. Appropriate credit is requested.