Image: Tethys and Janus captured against Saturn's rings

Image: Tethys and Janus captured against Saturn's rings
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Although Tethys and Janus both orbit Saturn and are both made of more or less the same materials, they are very different worlds. Their contrasts are related, in large part, to their sizes.

Tethys (660 miles or 1,062 kilometers across) is large enough to be spherical and to have varied geology, like chasms and smooth plains, along with some puzzling arc-shaped features (see PIA19637). Much smaller Janus (111 miles or 179 kilometers across) is irregularly shaped and has (so far) shown few signs of apart from .

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 1 degree above the ring plane. The image was taken in with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 23, 2015.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 28,000 miles (44,000 kilometers) from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 54 degrees. Image scale is 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) per pixel.

Provided by NASA

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