Criss-crossing streaks of Dione
A gorgeous Dione poses for the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, with shadowed craters and bright wispy streaks first observed by the US Voyager spacecraft 24 years ago.
The wispy areas will be imaged at higher resolution in mid-December 2004. Subtle variations in brightness across the surface of this moon are visible here as well. Dione is 1118 kilometres across.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini-Huygens narrow-angle camera on 27 October 2004, at a distance of about 1.2 million kilometres from Dione. The image scale is 3.5 kilometres per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a co-operative project of NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency.
Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute