NASA has finally made images taken of Saturn's moon Dione during the Cassini spacecraft's final flyby available to the public.
The photos were taken from less than 300 miles from Saturn's moon surface, seen in high resolutions. Imaging scientists combined nine visible light images to create the mosaic view of an area at the lower left of Dione, which is an orthographic projection centered on terrain at 0.2 degrees north latitude, 179 degrees west longitude. They used eight light images from the narrow-angle camera and one from the wide-angle camera, which creates the view seen by a distant observer looking through a telescope, according to NASA's official site.
"I am moved, as I know everyone else is, looking at these exquisite images of Dione's surface and crescent, and knowing that they are the last we will see of this far-off world for a very long time to come. Right down to the last, Cassini has faithfully delivered another extraordinary set of riches. How lucky we have been," Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., said in a statement on the NASA website, according to Fox News.
Cassini's final flyby was it's fifth flyby. While it provided the best imagery, it was not the closest flyby of Dione ever, which was in 2011 at a distance of only 60 miles, Slash Gear reported.
