New Janus Image: The Two Faces of Janus

CICLOPS has released this view of Saturn's moon Janus taken on August 2. This view shows only a slim crescent of Janus lit by sunlight, highlighting a couple of craters near the terminator. On the left side, however, Janus is dimly lit by Saturn, to the left of this image. Several large impact craters are visible in the Saturn-shine.

Janus is a small, irregular satellite of Saturn, only 181 km across. Cassini's closest encounter with Janus won't come until the very last day of the nominal mission, June 30, 2008, when Cassini is scheduled to come within 45,000 km of the surface of this satellite. Cassini flew within 50,000 km of another small satellite of Saturn, Pandora, yesterday for Cassini's closest encounter with that satellite during the nominal mission.