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

Great White Splat

Caption: Looking closely at Rhea (1,528 kilometers, 949 miles across) during a somewhat distant flyby, Cassini provides this view of what appears to be a bright, rayed and therefore relatively young crater. This crater was also observed at much lower resolution in fall 2004 and in spring 2005.

For comparison, viewing the same crater near the terminator (the line between day and night) would highlight the crater’s topography (vertical relief), compared to its brightness, which is highlighted in this view where the Sun is at a higher angle.

North on Rhea is up and rotated about 15 degrees to the left. This view shows principally the leading hemisphere on Rhea.

The image was taken in visible light with the narrow angle camera on April 14, 2005 from a distance of approximately 247,000 kilometers (153,000 miles]) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 70 degrees. Resolution in the image is 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel.

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

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