                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
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                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2022 January 4

                        Moons Beyond Rings at Saturn
             Image Credit: NASA, ESA, JPL, Cassini Imaging Team

   Explanation: What's happened to that moon of Saturn? Nothing --
   Saturn's moon Rhea is just partly hidden behind Saturn's rings. In
   2010, the robotic Cassini spacecraft then orbiting Saturn took this
   narrow-angle view looking across the Solar System's most famous rings.
   Rings visible in the foreground include the thin F ring on the outside
   and the much wider A and B rings just interior to it. Although it seems
   to be hovering over the rings, Saturn's moon Janus is actually far
   behind them. Janus is one of Saturn's smaller moons and measures only
   about 180 kilometers across. Farther out from the camera is the heavily
   cratered Rhea, a much larger moon measuring 1,500 kilometers across.
   The top of Rhea is visible only through gaps in the rings. After more
   than a decade of exploration and discovery, the Cassini spacecraft ran
   low on fuel in 2017 and was directed to enter Saturn's atmosphere,
   where it surely melted.

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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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