Stunning View of Dione, Enceladus, and Saturn’s Rings

NASA’s Cassini imaging scientists processed this view of Saturn’s moon Dione, taken during a close flyby on June 16, 2015.
This was Cassini’s fourth targeted flyby of Dione and had a close approach altitude of 321 miles (516 kilometers) from Dione’s surface.

Also making an appearance in this image is Saturn’s geysering moon Enceladus, seen in the upper right, just above the bright line of Saturn’s rings.

North on Dione is up and rotated 44 degrees to the left. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 16, 2015.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 128 degrees. Image scale is 3 miles (5 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini Solstice Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. 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.

For more information about the Cassini Solstice Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI