The US space agency NASA has released a fascinating picture of Rhea, the second largest moon of Saturn just after Titan. The shot has been taken by its Cassini spacecraft.
After Titan and Tethys which is now the smallest among three, Rhea has caught Cassini's interest. It looks bright in the sunlight, the reason being the water ice that forms most of the moon's surface.
As per NASA scientists, among all the moons of the Saturn, Rhea has the most heavily cratered ancient surface and has subtle albedo variations across the disk. All these variations hint at the geologic activities in the past.
Talking about the image, NASA said, that, this view looks toward the anti-Saturn hemisphere of Rhea. North on Rhea is up and rotated 36 degrees to the right. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 3, 2016 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers.
This dazzling image was captured at a distance of approximately 365,000 miles (587,000 kilometers) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 9 degrees. Image scale is 2.4 miles (3.9 kilometers) per pixel.
Cassini spacecraft is the fourth unmanned spacecraft sent to the Saturn. The spacecraft entered the orbit back in 2004 and since then it has been looking at the heaviest planet of our solar system and its natural satellites.
