NASA Cassini Image: Saturn’s moon Pandora and the F Ring

Saturn’s moon Pandora (at right center) helps shape the narrow F ring. 

Pandora (50 miles, or 81 kilometers across) orbits outside the F ring. 

Another shepherd moon Prometheus (53 miles, or 86 kilometers across), orbits inside, both helping to prevent the ring from spreading. 

Cassini spacecraft took the image in visible light with the wide-angle camera on March 8, 2014. 

Image released Aug. 11, 2014.

Credit: NASA

Saturn's Moon Prometheus causes turbulence in it's F ring - video

Prometheus is caught in the act of creating gores and streamers in the F ring. 

Scientists believe that Prometheus and its partner-moon Pandora are responsible for much of the structure in the F ring.

Image Credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech /Space Science Institute (SSI)

The orbit of Prometheus (53 miles, or 86 kilometers across) regularly brings it into the F ring.

When this happens, it creates gores, or channels, in the ring where it entered. 

Prometheus then draws ring material with it as it exits the ring, leaving streamers in its wake.

This process creates the pattern of structures seen in this image.

This process is described in detail, along with a movie of Prometheus creating one of the streamer/channel features, in the image PIA08397.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 8.6 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 11, 2014.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.3 million miles (2.1 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 147 degrees. Image scale is 8 miles (13 kilometers) per pixel.

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

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.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission. You can also visit the Cassini imaging team homepage.

NASA Cassini: Saturn's moon Prometheus sculpting the F Ring

Saturn's moons create art on the canvas of Saturn's rings with gravity as their tool. 

Here Prometheus is seen sculpting the F ring while Daphnis (too small to discern in this image) raises waves on the edges of the Keeler gap.

Prometheus (53 miles, or 86 kilometers across) is just above image center while Daphnis (5 miles, or 8 kilometers across), although too small to see in its location in the Keeler gap just to the right of center, can be located by the waves it creates on the edges of the gap. 

Prometheus and stars have been brightened by a factor of 2 relative to the rest of the image to enhance their visibility.

There are 20 stars visible in this image.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 53 degrees below the ringplane. 

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 25, 2013.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.2 million miles (1.9 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 111 degrees. 

Image scale is 7 miles (11 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.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . 

The Cassini imaging team homepage is at ciclops.org .

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute