Like the hunted white whale Moby Dick taunting Captain Ahab. This is how Prometheus , one of the moons that accompanies Saturn , appears before the viewer in a 3D image sent by NASA's Cassini space probe.
Prometheus is one of the closest satellites to Saturn. It orbits the gas giant at a distance of about 140,000 kilometers, and is an icy, porous body 86 kilometers wide at its widest point. The new image shows its irregular shape and the circular scars on its surface, which point to a busy history. According to experts, these craters are probably the remains of impacts that occurred a long time ago.
Cassini's narrow-angle camera captured two black and white images of the moon on December 26, 2009, which combined offer this new point of view in stereo. In the new 3D image, the Sun illuminates Prometheus at a different angle, making the elongated body of the moon visible for the first time.
The next Cassini probe flight is scheduled around the Rea satellite for March 2.
