Cassini probe has once again captured another beautiful view from its subject planet Saturn, as it goes on its mission rounding on its rings, the image of one of its moon came. The wavemaker moon or called Daphnis was sighted last January 16 when Cassini traveled on the outermost part of Saturn's rings as Daphnis orbits within the 42 kilometer-wide Keeler Gap. The small moon was called 'The Wavemaker' as it creates waves in the edges of the gap due to its gravitational pull, and with this Cassini was also able to provide some details of Daphnis' appearance.

Daphnis has the same narrow ridge on its equator and a smooth material on its surface coming from some particles on its rings like the other small ringed moons of Saturn. According to reports from Space Daily, not so many craters were visible on that captured point, and ridges not only on the equatorial band but come stretching on the north part of the moon. As particles from the ring give a softer look on the waves in the gap in contrast to the sharp edges of the Keeler Gap, a trail of particles were also noted following behind Daphnis.

Also termed as "Shepherd Moons", these moons keeps the gap on the rings empty and instead "herd away" dust particles. According to reports from The Space Reporter, the small moon looked a lot bigger because of the angle used by Cassini to capture the image, causing the gap to look narrower. The term foreshortening is what explains the difference of the actual to the image that was captured due to the angle used by the image captor.

The image was taken in visible (green) light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 17,000 miles (28,000 kilometers) from Daphnis and at a Sun-Daphnis-spacecraft, or phase, an angle of 71 degrees. Image scale is 551 feet (168 meters) per pixel.

Related