Saturn's
rings appear to spear the planet's moon Titan
while a smaller satellite looks on.
Saturn’s A
and F rings stretch across the frame in this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft currently studying
the moon-rich, ringed planet.
The dark
region inside the A ring is known as the Encke Gap, in which Saturn’s tiny moon
Pan and several ringlets circle their parent world. Pan is just 16 miles (26
kilometers) in diameter while the Encke Gap spans a distance of about 200 miles
(325 kilometers).
The
massive, cloud-shrouded moon behind the rings is obviously Titan, a satellite 3,200
miles (5,150 kilometers) wide and larger than the planet Mercury. The smaller
moon above Saturn’s ring plane is Epimetheus,
a battered satellite only 72 miles (116 kilometers) in diameter.
The Cassini
orbiter used its narrow-angle camera to capture this view from a distance of
about 415,000 miles (667,000 kilometers) from Epimetheus or 1.1 million miles
(1.8 million kilometers) from Titan.
-- SPACE.com Staff
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science
Institute.
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