Cassini Imaging Science: Initial Results on Saturn's Rings and Small Satellites

Creators: Porco, C. C.; Dyudina, U.; Ingersoll, A. P.

Abstract

Images acquired of Saturn's rings and small moons by the Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) during the first 9 months of Cassini operations at Saturn have produced many new findings. These include new saturnian moons; refined orbits of new and previously known moons; narrow diffuse rings in the F-ring region and embedded in gaps within the main rings; exceptionally fine-scale ring structure in moderate– to high–optical depth regions; new estimates for the masses of ring-region moons, as well as ring particle properties in the Cassini division, derived from the analysis of linear density waves; ring particle albedos in select ring regions; and never-before-seen phenomena within the rings.

Additional Information

© 2005 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 30 November 2004; accepted 12 January 2005. We acknowledge the many individuals across the imaging team who have assisted in the design of imaging sequences and camera commands and in other vital operational and image-processing tasks, in particular E. Birath, J. Riley, B. Knowles, C. Clark, M. Belanger, and D. Wilson. M. Hedman is acknowledged for fruitful discussions. This work has been funded by NASA/JPL, the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and Universite´ Paris VII Denis Diderot, Commissariat a` l'Energie Atomique, Astrophysique Interactions Multie´chelles, France.

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