This still image shows the first tiny 'worldlet,' temporarily dubbed S/2004 S1, as it makes its way around Saturn. A white box frames the moon's location in the image.
The image is part of a Cassini-Huygens movie sequence specifically designed to search for new moons in the inner Saturnian system. It has not been cleaned of imaging artifacts but has been greatly enhanced in contrast to increase visibility. Consequently, the background scattered light from the nearby rings, as well as many cosmic ray hits and noise patterns, are clearly apparent.
The size of the moon has been estimated to be 3 kilometres across. Because the moon is small and not resolved it appears as a faint point of light just barely visible above the background.
The image was taken on 1 June 2004, at a distance of 16.5 million kilometres from Saturn. The image scale is approximately 100 kilometres per pixel. This view was taken looking upward from Cassini-Huygens’s southern vantage point, beneath the ring plane.