New object found in Saturn's rings

This movie is a sequence of 18 images taken by the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft narrow-angle camera on 21 June 2004. Images were taken every eight minutes over the course of two and a quarter hours. Each image has been enhanced to show the presence of the newly detected object.

The size of the object has been estimated to be four to five kilometres across. Because it is so small, it is not resolved and appears as a faint point of light just barely visible above the background 'noise'.

These images, which are part of a sequence specifically designed to search for small new moons in the inner Saturnian system, have not been 'cleaned' and have been greatly enhanced in contrast to increase visibility. This means that the main rings are overexposed, and many cosmic ray hits and noise patterns can be seen. The image scale is approximately 40 kilometres per pixel.