Breathtaking vista of Saturn and Tethys
This dazzling view looks beyond gigantic storms near Saturn's south pole to the small but clear disc of Tethys (1060 kilometres across).
Clouds and ribbons of gas swirl about in the planet's atmosphere in the foreground, while a tremendous chasm is visible on the icy moon.
The image was taken with the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft narrow-angle camera on 18 October 2004, at a distance of 3.9 million kilometres from Saturn. The image scale is 23 kilometres per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a co-operative project of NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency.
Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
