Saturn’s moon Pan, named for the Greek god of shepherds, rules over quite a different domain—the Encke gap in Saturn’s rings. See the inset at left for a zoomed in view. Pan (28 km across) keeps the Encke gap open through its gravitational influence on the ring particles nearby.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 48 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Christmas Day, 2013, from a distance of approximately 2.3 million km from Pan. The image scale is about 14 km) per pixel.

Image Credit: NASA