Dione
Date: 24 November 2004
Satellite: Cassini
Depicts: Dione
Copyright: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
A gorgeous Dione poses for Cassini, with shadowed craters and bright, wispy streaks first observed by the Voyager spacecraft 24 years ago. The wispy areas will be imaged at higher resolution in mid-December 2004. Subtle variations in brightness across the surface of this moon are visible here as well. Dione's diameter is 1118 kilometres.
The image shows primarily the trailing hemisphere of Dione, which is the side opposite the moon's direction of motion in its orbit. The image has been rotated so that north is up.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on 27 October 2004, at a distance of about 1.2 million kilometres from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 28 degrees. The image scale is 3.5 kilometres per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
