ESA — That’s No Potato… That’s Prometheus!

Saturn’s potato-shaped moon Prometheus is rendered in three dimensions in this close-up from Cassini. This 3D view is a color composite picture made from two different black and white images that were taken from slightly different viewing angles.

The images are combined so that the viewer’s left and right eye, respectively and separately, see a left and right image of the black and white stereo pair when viewed through red-blue glasses. This view looks toward the leading hemisphere of Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across). North on Prometheus is up and rotated 47 degrees to the right. The end of Prometheus on the lower right points toward Saturn, and the end on the upper left points away from the planet.

The images were taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 26, 2009. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 57,000 kilometers (35,000 miles) from Prometheus and at a Sun-Prometheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 33 degrees. Image scale is 339 meters (1,112 feet) per pixel.