Penelope

The crater Penelope as seen by the Cassini spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Here’s the caption from the Cassini website:

The terminator encroaches upon Penelope, one of the largest craters on Saturn’s moon Tethys. Two other large craters, Polyphemus and Phemius, are visible near the limb in this view of the southern portions of Tethys’ trailing hemisphere.

The far rim of Phemius disrupts the smooth profile of the icy moon’s limb.

Features on Tethys are named for characters and places in “The Odyssey.”

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 24, 2008 at a distance of approximately 62,000 kilometers (38,000 miles) from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 94 degrees. Image scale is 366 meters (1,200 feet) per pixel.

2 Comments so far

  1. itwasntme on January 20th, 2009

    Sudden supernova spotted along Pennsylvania Avenue…

  2. Tom on January 20th, 2009

    I bet!!

Leave a reply