111-mile-wide Janus passes in front of the face of her much larger sister Titan in this image from Cassini, taken on March 27. At 3,200 miles wide, Titan is one of the largest moons in the solar system, even larger than the planet Mercury. A thick atmosphere keeps its frigid and gloomy surface permanently hidden…
Tag: Janus
Shadow Play
A series of images from Cassini shows the 110-mile-wide Janus passing through shadows cast by Saturn’s rings. Janus shares its orbit within the ring system with sister moon Epimetheus. Both are small, rocky worlds…irregularly-shaped clusters of rubble pockmarked by ancient craters and displaying lots of scrapes and gouges, evidence of glancing blows by larger bodies.
Ringshine
Moons Dione and Janus are crescent-lit by the scattered light of Saturn’s F-ring, a narrow, clumpy ring with a bright core of water ice particles. (Dione is in the foreground.) This photo was rendered in true color by Gordan Ugarkovic using raw image data. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Gordan Ugarkovic.
Lights in the Dark 