Three very different worlds crowd the frame in this unique view from the Cassini spacecraft, which although partly overexposed, provides a splendid look at several major targets of interest for the mission.
Titan (at the top) has a thick, hazy atmosphere. Cassini has observed it to be a world where complex geological and atmospheric processes are occurring. At 5,150 kilometres across, it is Saturn's largest moon, and is the second largest moon in the solar system, after Jupiter's moon Ganymede (5,262 kilometres across). Tethys (at the bottom) has been battered by impacts over the eons, and some of its many craters are visible in this image. Tethys (1,071 kilometres across) is one of Saturn's major icy moons, having a density close to that of water. This moon shows evidence that icy tectonic processes have occurred on its frozen surface, such as the immense canyon system called Ithaca Chasma. Epimetheus (centre) is one of Saturn's "ring moons": small, porous bodies that orbit within or just beyond the rings. Cassini acquired the closest-ever view of cratered Epimetheus (116 kilometres across) in March, 2005.
Also near centre are Saturn's F ring and the outer edge of the A ring to the left. In addition to the F ring's usually bright core, several other ringlets are resolved here, giving the ring a soft, wispy character that shows contrast with the more sharply defined A ring.
Appearances can be deceiving in two dimensional images like this one where it is difficult to tell which objects are in the foreground and which are farther away. In this scene, Tethys is the closest object to Cassini, at 1.2 million kilometres away. Epimetheus is on the near side of the rings and is 1.4 million kilometres distant. The giant moon Titan is 2.7 million kilometres away, more than twice as far from Cassini as Tethys.
This view is a mosaic of two images taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 19, 2005. The image scale in the scene ranges from 16 kilometres per pixel on Titan to 7 kilometres per pixel on Tethys.
