NASA Cassini Image: Saturn's Moon Tethys in Sunlight

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech /Space Science Institute

Tethys, like many moons in the solar system, keeps one face pointed towards the planet around which it orbits.

Tethys' anti-Saturn face is seen here, fully illuminated, basking in sunlight.

On the right side of the moon in this image is the huge crater Odysseus.

The Odysseus crater is 280 miles (450 kilometers) across while Tethys is 660 miles (1,062 kilometers) across.

See PIA07693 for a closer view and more information on the Odysseus crater.

This view looks toward the anti-Saturn side of Tethys.

North on Tethys is up and rotated 33 degrees to the right.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 15, 2013.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 503,000 miles (809,000 kilometers) from Tethys. Image scale is 3 miles (5 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

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 and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.