(See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy. The moon's name is Atlas, meaning 'dim sum,' we assume. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. Licensing Public domain Public domain false false The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.įor more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit and. at low and medium pitch angle produces so called pancake electron distribution. The flyby had a close-approach distance of about 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers).
The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. Expedition Titan Turns Saturns Moon into a Mixed-reality Thrill Ride. These raw, unprocessed images of Saturn's moon, Atlas, were taken on April 12, 2017, by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with MMS spacecraft launches from. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Some might see a pancake, and others a sand dollar, in this new image from NASAs Dawn mission. Two of Saturns icy moons are clearly visible in this exposure: Mimas at right. The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. All images are oriented so that north is up. 16, 2017, at a distance of 17,000 miles (28,000 kilometers) and at a phase angle of 71 degrees. The images of Pan were taken on March 7, 2017, at a distance of 16,000 miles (26,000 kilometers) and a phase angle of 21 degrees. The images of Atlas were acquired on April 12, 2017, at a distance of 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) and at a sun-moon-spacecraft angle (or phase angle) of 37 degrees. Two odd ufo shaped moons of Saturn are worth seeing on our tour of true strange stuff in the universe. (The Daphnis image in Figure 1 was colored using the same green filter image for all three color channels, adjusted to have a realistic appearance next to the other two moons.)Ī version of the montage using only monochrome images is also provided ( Figure 2).Īll of these images were taken using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. By keeping the mission within the constraints of an Atlas V 551 launch vehicle versus. Images of Atlas and Pan taken using infrared, green and ultraviolet spectral filters were combined to create enhanced-color views ( Figure 1), which highlight subtle color differences across the moons' surfaces at wavelengths not visible to human eyes. It has long been known that Saturns moon Enceladus is expelling. Pan's equatorial band is much thinner and more sharply defined, and the central mass of Atlas (the part underneath the smooth equatorial band) appears to be smaller than that of Pan.
Two differences between Atlas and Pan are obvious in this montage. The new images are creating scientific puzzles about. The tiny Saturnian moon, Atlas, is locked into what is known as an orbital resonance with another moon, Mimas, whose orbit lies outside that of Atlas. From the time of its discovery in 1980, Atlas was believed to be the shepherd moon for the outer edge of the A Ring, but this is not the case, and the moons Janus and Epimetheus are now known t be responsible responsible. However, Saturns moons were believed to have formed near the gas giant, in the midst of its rings, rather than in deep space. The height of the ridge between about 3 km (2 miles) and 5 km (3 miles), and represents more than a quarter of Atlas volume. This montage of views from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows three of Saturn's small ring moons: Atlas, Daphnis and Pan at the same scale for ease of comparison. The larger lobe looks to have a shape similar to some of the pancake moons of Saturn, like Atlas. English: PIA21449: Small Wonders (color image)
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