The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
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Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThis 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.