Hubble Sees Moons Racing Across Saturn

This movie still captures the moons Mimas, Enceladus, and Dione as they begin their race across Saturn's disk. The still is from a movie created from images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It reveals the planet's rings tilted nearly edge-on toward the Sun, an event that occurs once every 15 years. Because of this special alignment, the moons cast shadows on the planet and its rings. Dione is on the far left of the image, Mimas is in the middle, and Enceladus is on the right. Dione and Enceladus are casting long shadows on the rings. The "thumbnail" images on the left are frames from the movie that show the moons transiting the planet.

The images were taken Nov. 17, 1995 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, in blue, green, and red filters.

About the data

The Hubble images and videos were created from HST data from proposal 6030 : M. Tomasko and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona); and proposal 9354: E. Karkoschka and M. Tomasko (University of Arizona).