Saturn's moon Daphnis mosaic made from Cassini images is incredibly stunning – See pic

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

New Delhi: NASA has created a stunning mosaic of Daphnis, one of Saturn's ring-embedded moons, using images from the Casini spacecraft.

In this new view of the mosaic, Daphnis is seen kicking up waves as it orbits within the Keeler gap.

NASA says the mosaic comprises several images in order to show more waves in the gap edges than seen in a previously released image.

Images like this provide scientists with a close-up view of the complicated interactions between a moon and the rings, as well as the interactions between the ring particles themselves, in the wake of the moon’s passage.

It says that three wave crests of diminishing sizes that trail Daphnis can be seen in this image. In each subsequent crest, the shape of the wave evolves, as the ring particles within the crests collide with one another.

Daphnis is a small moon at 5 miles (8 kilometers) across, but its gravity is powerful enough to disrupt the tiny particles of the A ring that form the Keeler gap's edge. As the moon moves through the Keeler gap, wave-like features are created in both the horizontal and vertical plane.

Using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera, the images in this mosaic were taken in visible light at a distance of approximately 17,000 miles from Daphnis and at a Sun-Daphnis-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 71 degrees.