Fleeing the Scene

Saturn's moon Prometheus, having perturbed the planet's thin F ring, moves away as it continues in its orbit.

The gravity of potato-shaped Prometheus (86 kilometers, 53 miles across) periodically creates streamer-channels in the F ring, and the moon's handiwork can be seen in the dark channels here. To learn more and to watch a movie of this process, see PIA08397.

This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from about 10 degrees above the ringplane. A star is visible through the rings near the center right of the image.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 1, 2010. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (808,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 7 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Note: For more information and photos, see Saturnology's Fan Structures in Saturn's F-Ring.