Crater Comparison on Rhea

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute , Posted on: Thursday, 3 July 2008, 07:26 CDT Download full size image

This view of Saturn's moon Rhea includes two large and ancient impact basins and a more recent, bright ray crater.

The large basin above center is named Tirawa. This feature (and the similar-sized crater to its left) is overprinted by many other craters, meaning it is an extremely old feature that has collected other impacts over the eons.

For a high-resolution view of the bright ray crater, see Catch That Crater.

This bright ray crater appears to be a younger feature, as it possesses crisp edges, is not heavily overprinted by other craters, and the blanket of bright, fresh material thrown out by the impact is still visible.

Lit terrain seen here is on the moon's anti-Saturn side. North on Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) is toward the top of the image. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 13, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 889,000 kilometers (552,000 miles) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 31 degrees. Image scale is 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.

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