* Astronomy

Cassini captured this view of Epimetheus on May 20, 2005.
The moon's lumpy, irregular topography can be seen here, along with several impact craters.


Epimetheus is 116 kilometres across.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera, at a distance of approximately 345,000 kilometres from Epimetheus and at a Sun-Epimetheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 26 degrees.
Resolution in the original image was 2 kilometres per pixel. The view was magnified by a factor of two and contrast-enhanced to aid visibility of the moon's surface.


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This false-colour view, Cassini presents the closest look yet at Saturn's small moon Epimetheus and was obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 30, 2005, at a distance of approximately 74,600 kilometres.

The view combines images obtained using filters sensitive to ultraviolet, polarized green and infrared light. The images were taken at a Sun-Epimetheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 115 degrees, thus part of the moon is in shadow to the right.
This view shows an area seen only very obliquely by NASA's Voyager spacecraft. The scene has been rotated so that north on Epimetheus is up.

The slightly reddish feature in the lower left is a crater named Pollux. The large crater just below centre is Hilairea, which has a diameter of about 33 kilometres. At 116 kilometres across, Epimetheus is slightly smaller than its companion moon, Janus (181 kilometres across), which orbits at essentially the same distance from Saturn.