NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured 3D view of Saturn’s moon Pan using red-blue glasses. The US space agency has shared the images on its official website giving a new insight into the structure of the potato-shaped moon.
The remarkable view shared by NASA shows both northern at left as well as southern hemispheres of Pan at the right. Apparently, scientists have rotated the view to maximise the stereo effect.
Pan has an average diameter of 17 miles (28 kilometers). The moon orbits within the Encke Gap in Saturn’s A ring.
Both of these views look toward Pan’s trailing side, which is the side opposite the moon’s direction of motion as it orbits Saturn.
These views were acquired by the Cassini narrow-angle camera on March 7, 2017, at distances of approximately 16,000 miles or 25,000 kilometers (left view) and 21,000 miles or 34,000 kilometers (right view).
Image scale in the original images is about 500 feet (150 meters) per pixel (left view) and about 650 feet (200 meters) per pixel (right view). The images have been magnified by a factor of two from their original size.
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 operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
The remarkable view shared by NASA shows both northern at left as well as southern hemispheres of Pan at the right. Apparently, scientists have rotated the view to maximise the stereo effect.
Pan has an average diameter of 17 miles (28 kilometers). The moon orbits within the Encke Gap in Saturn’s A ring.
Both of these views look toward Pan’s trailing side, which is the side opposite the moon’s direction of motion as it orbits Saturn.
These views were acquired by the Cassini narrow-angle camera on March 7, 2017, at distances of approximately 16,000 miles or 25,000 kilometers (left view) and 21,000 miles or 34,000 kilometers (right view).
Image scale in the original images is about 500 feet (150 meters) per pixel (left view) and about 650 feet (200 meters) per pixel (right view). The images have been magnified by a factor of two from their original size.
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 operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.