Rings of Saturn + Two Moons

Photo

Rings of Saturn and 2 Moons Shine in Gorgeous NASA Photo
by Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | January 20, 2016 07:00am ET

Two very different Saturn moons hang near the giant planet's iconic rings in a beatiful new photo from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

The photo, which was taken on Oct. 27 but just released Tuesday (Jan. 19), shows the spherical Tethys and the lumpy Janus, whose disparate shapes are a direct result of their divergent sizes.

"Moons like Tethys (660 miles or 1,062 kilometers across) are large enough that their own gravity is sufficient to overcome the material strength of the substances they are made of (mostly ice in the case of Tethys) and mold them into spherical shapes," NASA officials wrote in a description of the image.