[meteorite-list] Cassini Image of Methone

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 13:14:25 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201211072114.qA7LEP2A027736_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/imagedetails/index.cfm?imageId=4662

Cassini: Gray Egg
November 5, 2012

[Image]
It's difficult not to think of an egg when looking at Saturn's moon
Methone, seen here during a Cassini flyby of the small moon. The
relatively smooth surface adds to the effect created by the oblong
shape.

Small moons like Methone are not generally spherical in shape like
the larger moons. Their small sizes means that they lack sufficient
gravity to pull themselves into a round shape. Scientists think that
the elongated shapes of these moons may be a clue to how they formed.

Lit terrain seen here is on the leading side of Methone (2 miles,
3 kilometers across). North on Methone is up. The image was taken in
visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on
May 20, 2012.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 2,500 miles
(4,000 kilometers) from Methone and at a Sun-Methone-spacecraft, or
phase, angle of 63 degrees. Scale in the original image was 88 feet
(27 meters) per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of 2.

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

For more information
about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov or
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at
http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Received on Wed 07 Nov 2012 04:14:25 PM PST