Astronomy Picture of the Day 05-25-04

Explanation: Despite clouds and rain showers astronomer Phillip Perkins managed to spot a reddened, eclipsed Moon between the stones of this well known monument to the Sun during May's total lunar eclipse, from Stonehenge, England. When he recorded this dramatic picture, the rising Moon was only about 5 degrees above the horizon, but conveniently located through a gap in the circle of ancient stones. Although at first glance there appears to be an eerie, luminous pool of water in the foreground, Perkins notes that his daughter produced the artistic lighting effect. She illuminated a fallen stone and surrounding grass with a flashgun from her hiding place behind the large sarsen stone to the right of center. As the picture looks toward the southeast, the stone just below the Moon is one of the inner bluestones rather than the famous Heel Stone, which marks the northeast direction of the summer solstice sunrise.

Cassini sees Pandora and Prometheus moons of Saturn
CICLOPS/SPACE SCIENCE NEWS RELEASE
Posted: May 24, 2004

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Download larger image version here

Two of Saturn's moons Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across) and Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles across), are seen here shepherding the planet's narrow F-ring. Prometheus overtakes Pandora in orbit around Saturn about every 25 days. Slightly above the pair and to the right is another moon, Epimetheus (116 kilometers, or 72 miles across). The image was taken with the narrow angle camera on the Cassini spacecraft on May 1, 2004, at a distance of 31.4 million kilometers (19.5 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 187 kilometers (116 miles) per pixel. The image has been magnified and greatly contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

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