Thanks for sharing this with us.

Oh wait, that’s not among that particular quintuple of Saturnian moons. Drat. Neta new word though.

My personal top five “pentaverate” of Saturn’s moons would have to be :

Titan, Enceladus, Iapetus, Mimas & Hyperion. (Or maybe Phoebe?)

@1. Ken B : “That’s a bit ironic, as I always thought it was Prometheus Unbound.”

Well, if it helps it is Prometheus that is *doing* the binding in this case!

The absence of an atmosphere (combined with the absence of any familiar
objects) on the moon made it very hard for the Apollo astronauts to judge
distances.

That reminds me of some Apollo footage that I’ve seen (can’t remember where now) where one of the astronauts is bouncing over to a boulder. From the initial shot, it looks to be about the size of a car or so, but when he gets to it, it is the size of a house. Very confusing at first.

If we were actually there, floating amongst their orbits in a windowed spacecraft with a wider view angle, would the human eye be able to deduce at least some kind of distance perception?

In short, no.

Human binocular vision is only effective out to about 100 m or so. Beyond that, we must rely on other clues for relative distances of objects (such as knowledge we already have of them, haziness due to atmospheric dust and so on).

The absence of an atmosphere (combined with the absence of any familiar objects) on the moon made it very hard for the Apollo astronauts to judge distances. However, when they were heading towards the LM (i.e. an object with whose size they were familiar), they found it easier.

‘Penta-’ means five. What does ‘verate’ refer to? Moons? Spheres?

I’d model this if I had the time.

It’s kind of surreal the way everything is different sizes and different distances, but you can’t tell how large or small the are relatively due to the distances. The rings almost look like they shouldn’t even be there. Dione kind of looks like it’s skating across them.

It’s the usual telephoto effect. It flattens the scene making it look like everything is on top of one another. Photographers use it all the time for various effects.

@4 Endyo: I agree. What gets me with these pics is that, although these worlds are separated by inconceivable distances, there’s no way to tell which is nearer or farther. If we were actually there, floating amongst their orbits in a windowed spacecraft with a wider view angle, would the human eye be able to deduce at least some kind of distance perception?

Prometheus, along with its sister moon Pandora, act like shepherds, keeping Saturn’s F-ring particles entrained.

That’s a bit ironic, as I always thought it was Prometheus Unbound.

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