Astronomy Picture of the Day - Stereo Helene

NASA ^ | 29 Mar, 2025 | Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA; Stereo Image by Roberto Beltramini

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: Get out your red/blue glasses and float next to Helene, small, icy moon of Saturn. Appropriately named, Helene is a Trojan moon, so called because it orbits at a Lagrange point. A Lagrange point is a gravitationally stable position near two massive bodies, in this case Saturn and larger moon Dione. In fact, irregularly shaped ( about 36 by 32 by 30 kilometers) Helene orbits at Dione's leading Lagrange point while brotherly ice moon Polydeuces follows at Dione's trailing Lagrange point. The sharp stereo anaglyph was constructed from two Cassini images captured during a close flyby in 2011. It shows part of the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Helene mottled with craters and gully-like features.

[MtnClimber]

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For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.

[MtnClimber]

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

[MtnClimber]

I don’t have the 3-D glasses, but the image looks good anyway.

[b4me]

it seriously looks like a fake image. kind like some thing that was plastic wrapped and frozen a while.

[No name given]

Wow.

[Yardstick]

Haggis with lumpy filling.

[Delta 21]

Thats groovy, man.

[telescope115]

Saturn’s moons are just as fascinating as its rings. Their interactions with the rings, via the “shepherd” moons which define the divisions in the rings, is really unique.

[sauropod]

Bkmk