image: These close views of Rhea prominently show two large impact basins on the ancient and battered moon. The great age of these basins is suggested by the large number of smaller craters that are overprinted within them.
Ejecta from the bright, relatively young crater seen in PIA07609 spreads from the eastern limb.
Terrain visible in this view is on the side of Rhea (1,528 kilometers, 949 miles across) that faces away from Saturn. North on Rhea is up and tilted 30 degrees to the left.
The monochrome image was taken in wavelengths of infrared light centered at 930 nanometers; the false color view was created by combining images taken using filters sensitive to ultraviolet, visible green and infrared light. All images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 23, 2005, at a distance of approximately 341,000 kilometers (212,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 42 degrees. The image scale is 2 kilometers (1 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