* Astronomy

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RE: Telesto

Blobrana · L

This false-colour image taken by the Cassini spacecraft shows the surface features and colour variation on the moon Telesto. Similar to Pandora, the smooth surface of this Trojan moon suggests that it's covered with a mantle of fine, dust-sized icy material. The small moon Telesto is about 24 kilometres wide. Cassini captured this image at a distance of approximately 20,000 kilometres with its narrow-angle camera on December 25, 2005.

The monochrome image was taken in visible light. To create the false-colour view, ultraviolet, green and infrared images were combined into a single black and white picture that isolates and maps regional colour differences. This "colour map" was then superposed over a clear-filter image. The origin of the colour differences is not yet understood, but may be caused by subtle differences in the surface composition or the sizes of grains making up the icy soil.

All images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 25, 2005 at a distance of approximately 20,000 kilometres from Telesto and at a Sun-Telesto-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 58 degrees. Image scale is 118 meters per pixel.

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This image was taken on December 25, 2005 by the Cassini spacecraft. Telesto was approximately 20,826 kilometres away, and the image was taken using the CL1 and IR3 filters.

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Blobrana · L

This image was taken by the Cassini spacecraft on October 11, 2005 of Saturn’s moon Telesto that was approximately 11,408 kilometres away.

The image was taken using the CL1 and CL2 filters.

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Telesto shares its orbital path with much larger Tethys.
Telesto is 24 kilometres across.

Although this view may hint at a flattened, potato-like shape for Telesto (a common shape for Saturn's smaller moons), no features on the moon's surface can be resolved here.

This picture is one of the best images of Telesto thus far (Voyager's best image was about 5km/pixel).
Better images of Telesto will be taken when Cassini dies a 9800 km flyby of the trojan satellite on October 11, 2005. This will be one of the closest flybys of a small satellite during the tour. At closest approaches, images with a resolution of 56 m/pixel are possible (425 pixels across Telesto's disk).

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 1, 2005, at a distance of approximately 768,000 kilometres from Telesto and at a Sun-Telesto-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 37 degrees. Resolution in the original image was 5 kilometres per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of four to aid visibility.

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This is Cassini's best look yet at the Trojan moon Telesto (24 kilometres across), which orbits Saturn about 60 degrees ahead of the much larger Tethys (1,071 kilometres across). Calypso (22 kilometres across) is the other Tethys Trojan, and trails the larger moon by 60 degrees.

Trojan moons are found near gravitationally stable points ahead or behind a larger moon.

Cassini is able to partly resolve Telesto's shape in this view, but surface features are too small to be visible from this distance.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 20, 2005, at a distance of approximately 533,000 kilometres from Telesto. The image scale is 3 kilometres per pixel.
This view of Telesto has been magnified by a factor of three and sharpened to aid visibility.