UA connected to today's Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA

TUCSON, AZ (Tucson News Now) - NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day has a University of Arizona connection. The Cassini spacecraft recently snapped this dramatic panorama of Saturn's moon Dione. The high resolution image clearly shows the craters on the moon, which is about 680 miles across. Looking down into the lower edge of the image, you can pick out the rings of Saturn. That line behind behind the moon is also a Saturn ring seen edgeways.

According to NASA's APOD, this image was "taken during the last planned flyby of Dione by Cassini, as the spacecraft is scheduled to dive into Saturn's atmosphere during 2017."

This image was created from the Imaging Science System (ISS) on board Cassini. Scientists at the University of Arizona are part of the ISS team. Plus another Cassini instrument called the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) is operated by a group of scientists also based at the University of Arizona. VIMS is a color camera capable to taking pictures in over 350 different wavelengths. According to the University of Arizona's Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, this unique feature of the camera allows scientists the to identify "the chemical composition of a surface, atmosphere, or Saturn's rings by measuring the visible and infrared energy."