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Epimethean Profile

March 28, 2005
Epimetheus is one of Saturn's 'co-orbital moons' because it shares nearly the same orbit as Janus at a distance of approximately 151,000 kilometers from Saturn. This image was taken in visible light with NASA's Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera.

Epimetheus is one of Saturn's "co-orbital moons" because it shares nearly the same orbit as Janus at a distance of approximately 151,000 kilometers (94,000 miles) from Saturn. Epimetheus is 116 kilometers (72 miles) across and Janus is 181 kilometers (113 miles) across.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 18, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (684,000 miles) from Epimetheus and at a Sun-Epimetheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 96 degrees. Resolution in the original image was 6 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of four to aid visibility.

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 team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

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