Ring Slicer

Saturn's moon Prometheus, seen here looking suspiciously blade-like, is captured near some of its sculpting in the F ring. Prometheus' (53 miles or 86 kilometers across) orbit sometimes takes it into the F ring. When it enters the ring, it leaves a gore where its gravitational influence clears out some of the smaller ring particles. Below Prometheus, the dark lanes interior to the F ring's bright core provide examples of previous ring-moon interactions. This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 7 degrees below the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 15, 2015. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 286,000 miles (461,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 115 degrees. Image scale is 1.7 miles (2.8 kilometers) per pixel. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA18324