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Tirawa Impact Basin on Rhea
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The giant Tirawa impact basin straddles the day and night boundary on Saturn's moon Rhea in this view from the Cassini spacecraft. The ancient basin is 5 Km deep in places, as measured in NASA Voyager images. The whole basin is about 360 Km across.
The prominent bright splotch to the southeast of Tirawa is ejecta from a fairly fresh crater. This view of Rhea (1.528 Km, such as about 949 miles across) reveals terrain slightly to the East of a similar Cassini view, released earlier (see Diversity of Impacts). The sunlit surface in this view is principally on the leading hemisphere of Rhea. North is up and rotated 13° to the left.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 13, 2005, at a distance of approx. 2 MKM (about 1,2 MMs) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 50°. Resolution in the original image was 12 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of two to aid visibility.
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