From a low angle above Saturn's rings, the Cassini spacecraft's view of an icy moon is partly obscured.
The view looks toward Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) across the unilluminated side of the rings from less than a degree above the ringplane.The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 26, 2007. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel.The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09775: Enceladus in Hiding sur le site de la NASA.
This nearly equatorial view shows cratered regions on Enceladus in the central part of its leading hemisphere and high northern latitudes. Much of the rest of the geologically active moon is relatively crater free and covered by fractures and folds.
North on Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is up.
The image was taken in polarized green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 28, 2007 at a distance of approximately 293,000 kilometers (182,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This image shows the warmest places in the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The unexpected temperatures were discovered by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer during a close flyby on July 14, 2005. The image shows how these temperatures correspond to the prominent, bluish fractures dubbed "tiger stripes," first imaged by Cassini's imaging science subsystem cameras. Working together the two teams were able to pinpoint the exact location of the warmest regions on Enceladus.
The composite infrared spectrometer instrument measured the infrared heat radiation from the surface at wavelengths between 9 and 16.5 microns within each of the 10 squares shown here. Each square is 6 kilometers (4 miles) across. The color of each square, and the number shown above it, describe the composite infrared spectrometer's measurement of the approximate average temperature of the surface within that square.
The warmest temperature squares, at 91 and 89 degrees Kelvin (minus 296 and minus 299 degrees Fahrenheit), are located over one of the "tiger stripe" fractures. They contrast sharply with the surrounding temperatures, which are in the range 74 to 81 degrees Kelvin (minus 326 to minus 313 degrees Fahrenheit). The detailed composite infrared spectrometer data suggest that small areas near the fracture are at substantially higher temperatures, well over 100 degrees Kelvin (minus 279 degrees Fahrenheit). Such "warm" temperatures are unlikely to be due to heating of the surface by the feeble sunlight striking Enceladus' south pole. They are a strong indication that internal heat is leaking out of Enceladus and warming the surface along these fractures. Evaporation of this relatively warm ice probably generates the cloud of water vapor detected above Enceladus' south pole by several other Cassini instruments. Scientists are unsure how the internal heat reaches the surface. The process might involve liquid water, slushy brine, or soft but solid ice.
The imaging science subsystem image is an enhanced color view with a pixel scale of 122 meters (400 feet) that was acquired at the same time as the composite infrared spectrometer data. It covers a region 125 kilometers (75 miles) across. The spacecraft's distance from Enceladus was 21,000 kilometers (13,000 miles). The broad bluer fractures that can be seen running from the upper left to the lower right of the image are 1 to 2 kilometers (0.6 to 1.2 miles) wide and more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) long. The fractures are thought to be bluer than the surrounding surface because coarser-grained ice (which has a blue color just as thick masses of ice, like glaciers and icebergs, do on Earth) has been exposed in the fractures. The color image was constructed using an ultraviolet filter (centered at 338 nanometers) in the blue channel, a clear filter in the green channel, and an infrared filter (centered at 930 nanometers) in the red channel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The composite infrared spectrometer team is based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The composite infrared spectrometer team homepage is http://cirs.gsfc.nasa.gov/. The imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org
Blazing like an icy torch, the plume of Enceladus shines in scattered sunlight as the moon casts a shadow onto Saturn's E ring. Some of the tiny ice particles erupted from the moon's south polar region go into Saturn orbit, forming the doughnut-shaped ring, onto which the moon's shadow is cast in this view.
The shadow of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) stretches away to the upper left at around the 10 o'clock position. The Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle is 164 degrees here, with the Sun being located toward the lower right. This means that Enceladus' shadow extends toward the Cassini spacecraft -- through part of the E ring.
Some of the bright dots in this heavily processed view are background stars. Others are due to cosmic ray hits on the camera detector.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 11, 2006 at a distance of approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This image of Saturn's moon Enceladus shows a region of craters softened by time and torn apart by tectonic stresses. Fractures 100 to 400 meters (330 to 1,300 feet) in width crosscut the terrain: One set trends northeast-southwest and another trends northwest-southeast. North is up. A region of "grooved terrain" is visible on the left. A broad canyon, its floor partly concealed by shadow, is notable on the right.
The image was taken in visible light with Cassini's narrow-angle camera from a distance of about 25,700 kilometers (16,000 miles, red-colored image) and from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 46 degrees. Pixel scale is 150 meters (490 feet) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.
A stereo version of the scene is also available (see PIA06212).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
A world whose mysteries are just coming to light, Enceladus has enchanted scientists and non-scientists alike. With its potential for near-surface liquid water, the icy moon may be the latest addition to the list of possible abodes for life.
The view was acquired about two-and-a-half hours after PIA08280, during an encounter with Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across).
The image was taken using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized ultraviolet light. The Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera acquired the view on Sept. 9, 2006 at a distance of approximately 141,000 kilometers (877,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 96 degrees. Image scale is 850 meters (0.5 mile) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This stereo anaglyph of Saturn's moon Enceladus shows an area that has undergone a very intriguing -- and in places puzzling -- sequence of events. The craters here are subdued, as seen elsewhere on Enceladus, and most, but not all, are older than the fractures. Fracturing has occurred at a wide variety of scales, from the wide rift running through the center of the image to much narrower sets of shorter fractures that crosscut the craters (and each other) to the left.
The anaglyph has been rotated so that north on Enceladus is up.
This region is a transition from cratered to wrinkled terrain. Westward (left) of the central rift that divides the two regions are relatively parallel grooves and ridges that are reminiscent of terrain on Jupiter's large moon Ganymede. Very few craters are seen in this area of Enceladus. Eastward (right) of the large rift the terrain becomes more cratered, although the craters are quite degraded (meaning soft and shallow in appearance).
A prominent fracture runs north-south to the center of the image, then turns sharply to the southwest, cutting across cratered terrain, the large rift, and the grooved terrain. This behavior signifies that it is one of the youngest features in this image.
The images for this anaglyph were taken in visible light with Cassini's narrow-angle camera, at distances from Enceladus ranging from about 25,700 kilometers (16,000 miles, red-colored image) to 14,000 kilometers (8,800 miles, blue-colored image) and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle ranging from 46 to 44 degrees. Pixel scale in the red image was 150 meters (490 feet) per pixel. Scale in the blue image was 85 meters (280 feet) per pixel.
A separate, non-stereo version of the scene, showing only the red image, is also available (see PIA06215). The images have been contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The magnetometer team is based at Imperial College in London, working with team members from the United States and Germany.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The magnetometer team homepage is http://www.imperial.ac.uk/research/spat/research/cassini/.
Peeking over the crescent of Enceladus, the Cassini spacecraft views the towering plume of ice particles erupting from the moon's south polar region.
Multiple components of the overall plume are visible in this view of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across).
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 24, 2007 at a distance of approximately 188,000 kilometers (117,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 153 degrees. Image scale is 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This Cassini image of Saturn's moon Enceladus shows a region containing bizarre, wrinkled terrain. Enceladus is covered with bright water ice. The part of its surface visible here appears to be largely free of craters - indicating that it is geologically young.
The first close imaging of this moon will be done by Cassini in February 2005 and should reveal many surprises. Enceladus has a diameter of 499 kilometers (310 miles).
This view shows primarily the leading hemisphere of Enceladus. The image has been rotated so that north on Enceladus is up.
The image was acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Jan. 15, 2005, at a distance of approximately 367,000 kilometers (228,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 74 degrees. A combination of spectral filters sensitive to infrared and polarized light was used to obtain this view. Resolution in the original image was about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of two to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This image was taken during Cassini's extremely close encounter with Enceladus on Oct. 9, 2008.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 9, 2008, a distance of approximately 47,000 kilometers (29,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 279 meters (916 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11123: Enceladus Oct. 9, 2008 Flyby - Posted Image #5 sur le site de la NASA.
As it swooped past the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus on July 14, 2005, Cassini acquired high resolution views of this puzzling ice world. From afar, Enceladus exhibits a bizarre mixture of softened craters and complex, fractured terrains.
This large mosaic of 21 narrow-angle camera images have been arranged to provide a full-disk view of the anti-Saturn hemisphere on Enceladus. This mosaic is a false-color view that includes images taken at wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the infrared portion of the spectrum, and is similar to another, lower resolution false-color view obtained during the flyby (see PIA06249). In false-color, many long fractures on Enceladus exhibit a pronounced difference in color (represented here in blue) from the surrounding terrain.
A leading explanation for the difference in color is that the walls of the fractures expose outcrops of coarse-grained ice that are free of the powdery surface materials that mantle flat-lying surfaces.
The original images in the false-color mosaic range in resolution from 350 to 67 meters (1,148 to 220 feet) per pixel and were taken at distances ranging from 61,300 to 11,100 kilometers (38,090 to 6,897 miles) from Enceladus. The mosaic is also part of a movie sequence of images from this flyby (see PIA06253).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
As the Cassini spacecraft sped away from Enceladus following its close August 2008 flyby, the moon's wrinkled south polar region remained in view.
The blue-green hues so apparent in false color views like PIA11112 (obtained three hours before this image) are absent in natural-color views like this one, which approximate the scene as it might appear to human eyes. In visible light, the surface of Enceladus is almost perfectly white, and is, in fact, one of the most reflective objects in the Solar System.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this view. The images were digitally reprojected onto a computer model of Enceladus, and aligned there, in order to account for the spacecraft's rapid motion with respect to the moon.
The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 12, 2008 at a distance of approximately 201,000 kilometers (125,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale at maximum resolution is 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10473: White Moon sur le site de la NASA.
This Cassini image was the first and highest resolution 'skeet shoot' narrow-angle image captured during the Oct. 31, 2008, flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 31, 2008, at a distance of approximately 1,691 kilometers (1,056 miles) from Enceladus and at a sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 78 degrees. Image scale is 9 meters per pixel (29 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11124: Enceladus Rev 91 Flyby - Skeet Shoot #1 sur le site de la NASA.
The Cassini spacecraft spies Enceladus and Epimetheus near the limb of Saturn.
Geologically active Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) across; smaller, more irregularly shaped Epimetheus is 116 kilometers (72 miles) across.
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from less than a degree above the ringplane.
The image was taken in polarized green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 27, 2007. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (857,000 miles) from Enceladus. Epimetheus is 91,000 kilometers (57,000 miles) farther away from Cassini here. Image scale is about 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel on both moons.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09791: Off Saturn's Shoulder sur le site de la NASA.
Quick Time Movie of Cassini swooping past Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus
As it swooped past the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus on July 14, 2005, Cassini acquired increasingly high-resolution views of this puzzling ice world. These views have been combined into this exciting movie sequence. The movie provides a stunning, up-close look at what is surely one of the youngest surfaces in the Saturn system.
From afar, Enceladus exhibits a bizarre mixture of softened craters and complex, fractured terrains. The movie zooms in on the southern polar terrains and closes in on one of the tectonic stripes that characterize this region which is essentially free of sizeable impact scars.
The bright oblong area seen during the zoom is an intermediate resolution image from near the time of closest approach that has been melded into the lower resolution mosaic, and artificially brightened.
The movie ends on the highest resolution image acquired by Cassini which reveals a surface dominated by ice blocks between 10 and 100 meters (33 and 330 feet) across, lying in a region that is unusual in its lack of the very fine-grained frost that seems to cover the rest of Enceladus.
The lack of frost and the absence of craters are indicators of a youthful surface.
The initial image in the movie is a large mosaic of 21 narrow-angle camera images that have been arranged to provide a full-disk view of the anti-Saturn hemisphere on Enceladus. This mosaic is a false-color view that includes images taken at wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the infrared portion of the spectrum, and is similar to another, lower resolution false-color view obtained during the flyby (see PIA06249). In false-color, many long fractures on Enceladus exhibit a pronounced difference in color (represented here in blue) from the surrounding terrain.
A leading explanation for the difference in color is that the walls of the fractures expose outcrops of coarse-grained ice that are free of the powdery surface materials that mantle flat-lying surfaces.
The original images in the false-color mosaic range in resolution from 350 to 67 meters (1,148 to 220 feet) per pixel and were taken from distances ranging from 61,300 to 11,100 kilometers (38,090 to 6,897 miles) from Enceladus. The mosaic is also available separately (see PIA06254).
Image scale is about 37 meters (121 feet) per pixel in the wide-angle camera image and about 4 meters (13 feet) per pixel in the narrow-angle image (see PIA06250 for these images). Both of these ultra-high resolution views were acquired from an altitude of approximately 208 kilometers (129 miles) above Enceladus as the spacecraft near the time of closest approach during the flyby.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
Annotated Version
Click on the image
During two close flybys of Saturn's moon Enceladus in 2008, the cameras on NASA's Cassini acquired several very high-resolution images of specific regions of the south polar terrain. These images have been used to construct this detailed mosaic of the moon's famous tiger stripe fractures.
A special spacecraft maneuver dubbed "the skeet shoot" was employed to make smear-free imaging at close range possible. The ground track of the camera's pointing was selected to cut swaths across three tiger stripes, or sulci, the prominent rifts through which jets of water vapor and ice particles are actively jetting. The swaths during the two flybys were chosen to pass over specific locales on the surface. In total, six of the eight regions on or near the tiger stripes known to be warm sites of previously observed jet sources were imaged.
This clear filter mosaic includes all of the skeet-shoot images overlain on images acquired at lower resolution of regions near Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo Sulci. The annotated version identifies the locations of the six targeted jet source sites (solid yellow circles) as well as the footprints, or outlines, of Cassini's narrow-angle camera views of the surface during the skeet-shoot maneuvers on August 10 (green squares) and October 31 (orange squares). Although visible in other lower-resolution images, jet source site VIII (dashed yellow circle) was not targeted in the skeet shoot. Within the colored squares, image scales range from 9 meters (30 feet) to 39 meters (129 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11135: Tiger Stripes...Magnified! sur le site de la NASA.
A fine spray of small, icy particles emanating from the warm, geologically unique province surrounding the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus was observed in a Cassini narrow-angle camera image of the crescent moon taken on Jan. 16, 2005.
Taken from a high-phase angle of 148 degrees -- a viewing geometry in which small particles become much easier to see -- the plume of material becomes more apparent in images processed to enhance faint signals.
Imaging scientists have measured the light scattered by the plume's particles to determine their abundance and fall-off with height. Though the measurements of particle abundance are more certain within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of the surface, the values measured there are roughly consistent with the abundance of water ice particles measured by other Cassini instruments (reported in September, 2005) at altitudes as high as 400 kilometers (250 miles) above the surface.
Imaging scientists, as reported in the journal Science on March 10, 2006, believe that the jets are geysers erupting from pressurized subsurface reservoirs of liquid water above 273 degrees Kelvin (0 degrees Celsius).
The image at the left was taken in visible green light. A dark mask was applied to the moon's bright limb in order to make the plume feature easier to see.
The image at the right has been color-coded to make faint signals in the plume more apparent. Images of other satellites (such as Tethys and Mimas) taken in the last 10 months from similar lighting and viewing geometries, and with identical camera parameters as this one, were closely examined to demonstrate that the plume towering above Enceladus' south pole is real and not a camera artifact.
The images were acquired at a distance of about 209,400 kilometers (130,100 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel.
This caption was updated on March 9, 2006.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.This figure shows a possible history of the south polar terrain on Saturn's moon Enceladus.
The top figure is a digital map that shows the four major "tiger stripe" fractures and the ropey terrain between them near the south pole of Enceladus. The data were acquired by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, imaging science sub-system during four close-targeted flybys of Enceladus in March, August and October 2008.
Cassini scientists have recently inferred that tectonic spreading, somewhat like tectonic sea-floor spreading on Earth, occurs between and along the tiger stripes. However, unlike sea-floor spreading on Earth, where upwelling hot magma fills the central rift of a spreading ridge as the ridge spreads symmetrically to either side of the rift, on Enceladus the spreading is asymmetric. Like a conveyor belt, newly created icy crust on Enceladus spreads out asymmetrically (i.e., in one direction) relative to the tiger stripes.
It appears that a broad zone of spreading pushes from the western hemisphere side of the south polar terrain region (left side of the top panel) to the eastern side of the region (right side of the top panel). The map in the top panel is about 110 kilometers (68 miles) wide. If the tiger stripes and much of the surrounding terrain are snipped out of the map along the right tectonic contacts, the remaining sections can be pieced back together like a jigsaw puzzle. The reassembled puzzle shows what the tiger stripe region might have looked like long ago before much spreading took place.
The bottom panel shows the reconstruction of a possible paleo-terrain that may have existed early in the geological history of the south polar region. This reconstruction indicates that at least 73 kilometers (45 miles) of spreading may have occurred over time. After the reconstruction, a curious elliptical ring-shaped feature appears along the left edge at about the location where the spreading seems to have originated. A wavy pattern of ropey terrain deflects around the elliptical feature. Imaging scientists have speculated that perhaps this is a relict impact feature or the surface expression of a warm, rising diapir (convective cell) that may drive the spreading through convection, much the same way that convection drives plate tectonics on Earth.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11140: Ancient Terrain on Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
Cassini imaging scientists used views like this one to help them identify the source locations for individual jets spurting ice particles, water vapor and trace organic compounds from the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
Their study -- published in the Oct. 11, 2007, issue of the journal Nature -- identifies eight source locations, all on the prominent tiger stripe fractures, or sulci, in the moon's south polar region. Some of the sources occur in regions not yet observed by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer, and the researchers predict that future Cassini observations of those locations will find elevated temperatures.
This false-color view was created by combining three clear filter images taken at nearly the same time as PIA07759. This image product was then specially processed to enhance the individual jets that compose the plume. (PIA07759 was instead processed to reveal subtleties in the brightness of the overall plume that comprises the jets.) Some artifacts due to the processing are present in the image. The final product was colored as blue for dramatic effect.
The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 27, 2005 at a distance of approximately 148,000 kilometers (92,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 161 degrees. Scale in the original images is about 880 meters (0.5 mile) per pixel. This view has been magnified by a factor of two from the original images.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This excellent view of the faint E ring -- a ring feature now known to be created by Enceladus -- also shows two of Saturn's small moons that orbit within the ring, among a field of stars in the background.
The E ring extends from three to eight Saturn radii -- about 180,000 kilometers (118,000 miles) to 482,000 kilometers (300,000 miles). Its full extent is not visible in this view.
Calypso (22 kilometers, or 14 miles across) and Helene (32 kilometers, or 20 miles across) orbit within the E ring's expanse. Helene skirts the outer parts of the E ring, but here it is projected in front of a region deeper within the ring.
Calypso and Helene are trojan satellites, or moons that orbit 60 degrees in front or behind a larger moon. Calypso is a Tethys trojan and Helene is a trojan of Dione.
An interesting feature of note in this image is the double-banded appearance of the E-ring, which is created because the ring is somewhat fainter in the ringplane than it is 500-1,000 kilometers (300-600 miles) above and below the ringplane. This appearance implies that the particles in this part of the ring have nonzero inclinations (a similar affect is seen in Jupiter's gossamer ring). An object with a nonzero inclination does not orbit exactly at Saturn's ringplane. Instead, its orbit takes it above and below the ringplane. Scientists are not entirely sure why the particles should have such inclinations, but they are fairly certain that the reason involves Enceladus.
One possible explanation is that all the E ring particles come from the plume of icy material that is shooting due south out of the moon's pole. This means all of the particles are created with a certain velocity out of the ringplane, and then they orbit above and below that plane.
Another possible explanation is that Enceladus produces particles with a range of speeds, but the moon gravitationally scatters any particles that lie very close to the ringplane, giving them nonzero inclinations.
Stray light within the camera system is responsible for the broad, faint "Y" shape across the image.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on March 15, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale on the sky at the distance of Saturn is 142 kilometers (88 miles) per pixel.
Voir l'image PIA08163: The Enceladus Ring sur le site de la NASA.
If all the material that makes up Saturn's rings were compressed into a single body, it could make a moon roughly 80 percent the size of Saturn's moon Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across). Enceladus is seen here against the darkness of the planet's night side.
Saturn's rings are incredibly thin by astronomical standards; in most places no thicker than the height of a two-story building. Their apparent thickness here is deceptive, as Cassini is not located precisely within the ringplane, and the image resolution is greater than the physical thickness of the rings.
Long, threadlike shadows cast by the rings adorn the atmosphere in this somewhat eerie scene.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on March 11, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 74 kilometers (46 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
The Cassini spacecraft observes the wrinkled surface of Enceladus. The geologically active south polar region is visible at bottom.
This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across). Lit terrain is on the moon's leading hemisphere. North is up and rotated 16 degrees to the right.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 2, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 285,000 kilometers (177,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 108 degrees. Image scale is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10422: Crescent Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
Click on the image for movie of
Stellar Data on Plume
New structure, density and composition measurements of Enceladus' water plume were obtained when the Cassini spacecraft's Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph observed the star zeta Orionis pass behind the plume Oct. 24, 2007, as seen in this animation.
Changes in the starlight as it dimmed while passing through the plume allowed the spectrograph to identify the plume's physical and chemical composition. The spectrograph detected four high-density gas streams composed of water vapor. The density of the water vapor is twice that of the broad plume of gas that surrounds each jet.
This measurement confirms the theoretical analysis performed prior to the flyby that showed it was safe for Cassini to fly very closely past Enceladus, even through part of the plume, during the March 12, 2008 flyby.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The ultraviolet imaging spectrograph was designed and built at, and the team is based at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The ultraviolet imaging spectrograph team home page is at http://lasp.colorado.edu/cassini.
Voir l'image PIA10354: Stellar Data on Plume sur le site de la NASA.
Saturn's southern atmosphere looms before Cassini, displaying rich detail in its swirls and bands. The bright, icy moon Enceladus (499 kilometers, or 310 miles across) appears near the bottom of the image.
This view was taken through a filter where methane gas is a moderate absorber of sunlight. Since methane gas is not present on Enceladus, its surface scatters a higher percentage of the light falling on it than Saturn does, making the moon appear very bright compared with the planet. Enceladus was dimmed in brightness by a factor of four during processing of the image, in order to make its brightness comparable to that of Saturn.
The rings show some fine structure here. The three main rings, C, B and A from innermost to outermost, are clearly defined by their differences in brightness.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Sept. 19, 2004, at a distance of 8.3 million kilometers (5.2 million miles) from Saturn through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 727 nanometers. The image scale is 49 kilometers (30 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This image is the fourth skeet-shoot footprint taken during Cassini's very close flyby of Enceladus on Aug. 11, 2008. Cairo Sulcus is shown crossing the upper left portion of the image. An unnamed fracture curves around the lower right corner. (The image is upside down from the skeet-shoot footprint shown here.) The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 11, 2008, a distance of approximately 3,027 kilometers (1,881 miles) above the surface of Enceladus. Image scale is approximately 20 meters (66 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11109: Enceladus Rev 80 Flyby Skeet Shoot #4 sur le site de la NASA.
This image is the seventh skeet-shoot image taken during Cassini's very close flyby of Enceladus on Aug. 11, 2008. Damascus Sulcus is crossing the upper part of the image. (The image is upside down from the skeet-shoot footprint shown here.) The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 11, 2008, a distance of approximately 4,742 kilometers (2,947 miles) above the surface of Enceladus. Image scale is approximately 30 meters (98 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11107: Enceladus Rev 80 Flyby Skeet Shoot #7 sur le site de la NASA.
Click on image for larger annotated version
This Cassini image was the eight 'skeet shoot' narrow-angle image captured during the October 31, 2008, flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
The source region for jets II and III (see PIA08385) has been identified. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 31, 2008, at a distance of approximately 5,568 kilometers (3,480 miles) from Enceladus and at a sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 75 degrees. Image scale is 33 meters per pixel (108 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11125: Enceladus Rev 91 Flyby - Skeet Shoot #8 sur le site de la NASA.
The tortured southern polar terrain of Enceladus appears strewn with great boulders of ice in this fantastic view, one of the highest resolution images obtained so far by Cassini of any world.
Some smearing of the image due to spacecraft motion is apparent in this scene, which was acquired as Enceladus raced past Cassini's field of view near the time of closest approach. At the time, the imaging cameras were pointed close to the moon's limb (edge), rather than directly below the spacecraft. This allowed for less motion blur than would have been apparent had the cameras pointed straight down. Thus, the terrain imaged here was actually at a distance of 319 kilometers (198 miles) from Cassini.
At this fine scale, the surface is dominated by ice blocks between 10 and 100 meters (33 and 330 feet) across. The origin of these icy boulders is enigmatic. Scientists are interested in studying the sizes and numbers of the blocks in this bizarre scene, and in understanding whether terrain covered with boulders is common on Enceladus.
A wide-angle camera view centered on this location on Enceladus is available (see PIA06251), as well as a comparison view showing the position of this image within the wide-angle image (see PIA06250).
The image was taken during Cassini's very close flyby of Enceladus on July 14, 2005, from a distance of approximately 208 kilometers (129 miles) above Enceladus. Resolution in the image is about 4 meters (13 feet) per pixel. The image has been contrast enhanced to improve the visibility of surface.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
In Saturn's shadow, the southern hemisphere of Enceladus is lit by sunlight reflected first off of the rings and then onto the nightside of the planet.
Other sources of illumination include sunlight reflected off Titan, Dione, and Rhea, which, at the time this image was acquired, were all positioned in the same place in the Enceladan sky.
The deep Labtayt Sulci lie at the top of this image, which is nearly centered on the moon's South pole.
While features in the center of this image are in sharp focus, those near the limb appear blurred because the spacecraft was receding from Enceladus at 16 kilometers (10 miles) per second during this long exposure.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 31, 2008 at a distance of approximately 137,000 kilometers (85,100 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 73 degrees. Image scale is 818 meters (2,682 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10551: Enceladus in Eclipse sur le site de la NASA.
This image was taken during Cassini's extremely close encounter with Enceladus on Oct. 9, 2008.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 9, 2008, a distance of approximately 45,000 kilometers (28,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 541 meters (1,774 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11122: Enceladus Oct. 9, 2008 Flyby - Posted Image #4 sur le site de la NASA.
The high northern latitudes on Enceladus show little detail from Cassini's distant vantage point, nearly 50 degrees above the moon's equator.
The plume of icy material that jets from the south pole of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is not visible in this viewing geometry.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 26, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.7 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 95 degrees. Scale in the original image was 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel. The image was contrast enhanced and magnified by a factor of two.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Northern craters line the crescent of Enceladus.
This image is part of an observation designed to view the moon's plume of icy particles at a moderately high phase angle. Phase angle is the angle formed between the Sun, the target being imaged, and the spacecraft, and it ranges from 0 to 180 degrees. Tiny particles, like those in the plume, brighten substantially at high phase angles.
This view was taken from a vantage point 37 degrees above the equator of Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across). Reflected light from Saturn dimly illuminates the moon's dark side.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 17, 2008. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 262,000 kilometers (163,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 140 degrees. Image scale is 2 kilometers (5,137 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10498: Just a Phase sur le site de la NASA.
The exciting mystery of an active south polar region on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus continues to unfold as scientists make the correlation between geologically youthful surface fractures and unusually warm temperatures.
This view shows excess heat radiation from cracks near the moon's south pole. These warm fissures are the source of plumes of dust and gas seen by multiple instruments on the Cassini spacecraft during its flyby of Enceladus on July 14, 2005, as described in a series of papers in the March 10, 2006, issue of the journal Science.
This image shows two arrays of temperature readings across the surface of Enceladus, as measured by the Cassini composite infrared spectrometer, superimposed on images of the surface taken simultaneously by the imaging science subsystem.
Surface temperatures in Kelvin, derived from the intensity of infrared radiation detected by the composite infrared spectrometer, are shown along with their formal uncertainties, although true uncertainties for temperatures below about 75 Kelvin (minus 325 degrees Fahrenheit) are not easily described by a single number.
Enhanced thermal emission is seen in the vicinity of the prominent "tiger stripe" fissures discovered by the imaging cameras. In this image, the excess emission is most strongly seen in the left-most composite infrared spectrometer field of view, which includes a fissure near the end of one of the tiger stripes. The peak temperatures, 86 Kelvin and 90 Kelvin (minus 305 and minus 298 degrees Fahrenheit) respectively, are averages over the composite infrared spectrometer field of view, and other composite infrared spectrometer data suggest that much higher temperatures, up to at least 145 Kelvin (minus 199 degrees Fahrenheit), occur in narrow zones a few hundred meters wide along the tiger stripe fissures. See PIA07794 for a related image.
This image is centered near longitude 135 west, latitude 65 south, and each square from the composite infrared spectrometer field of view is 17.5 kilometers (10.9 miles) across.
This Cassini narrow-angle camera image has been cropped and resized for presentation.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The composite infrared spectrometer team is based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The composite infrared spectrometer team homepage is http://cirs.gsfc.nasa.gov/. The imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org
The wrinkled border of Enceladus' south polar region snakes across this view, separating fresher, younger terrain from more ancient, cratered provinces.
This is the region of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) that is known to be presently geologically active. At right are clearly visible ridges and troughs thought to be caused by compressional stresses across the icy surface.
The image was taken in polarized green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 9, 2006 at a distance of approximately 66,000 kilometers (41,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 104 degrees. Image scale is 396 meters (1,300 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This view of Saturn's moon Enceladus shows an area that has undergone a very intriguing -- and in places puzzling -- sequence of events. The craters here are subdued, as seen elsewhere on Enceladus, and most, but not all, are older than the fractures. Fracturing has occurred at a wide variety of scales, from the wide rift running through the center of the image to much narrower sets of shorter fractures that crosscut the craters (and each other) to the left.
The image has been rotated so that north on Enceladus is up.
This region is a transition from cratered to wrinkled terrain. Westward (left) of the central rift that divides the two regions are relatively parallel grooves and ridges that are reminiscent of terrain on Jupiter's large moon Ganymede. Very few craters are seen in this area of Enceladus. Eastward (right) of the large rift the terrain becomes more cratered, although the craters are quite degraded (meaning soft and shallow in appearance).
A prominent fracture runs north-south to the center of the image, then turns sharply to the southwest, cutting across cratered terrain, the large rift, and the grooved terrain. This behavior signifies that it is one of the youngest features in this image.
The image was taken in visible light with the narrow angle camera from a distance of about 14,000 kilometers (8,800 miles) and from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 44 degrees. Pixel scale in the image is about 85 meters (280 feet) per pixel.
A stereo version of the scene is also available (see PIA06214). The images have been contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The magnetometer team is based at Imperial College in London, working with team members from the United States and Germany.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The magnetometer team homepage is http://www.imperial.ac.uk/research/spat/research/cassini/.
The exciting mystery of an active south polar region on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus continues to unfold as scientists make the correlation between geologically youthful surface fractures and unusually warm temperatures.
This view shows excess heat radiation from cracks near the moon's south pole. These warm fissures are the source of plumes of dust and gas seen by multiple instruments on the Cassini spacecraft during its flyby of Enceladus on July 14, 2005, as described in a series of papers in the March 10, 2006, issue of the journal Science.
This image shows two arrays of temperature readings across the surface of Enceladus, as measured by the Cassini composite infrared spectrometer, superimposed on images of the surface taken simultaneously by the imaging science subsystem.
Surface temperatures in Kelvin, derived from the intensity of infrared radiation detected by composite infrared spectrometer, are shown along with their formal uncertainties, although true uncertainties for temperatures below about 75 Kelvin (minus 325 degrees Fahrenheit) are not easily described by a single number.
Enhanced thermal emission is seen in the vicinity of the prominent "tiger stripe" fissures discovered by the imaging cameras. In this image, the excess emission is near the center of the composite infrared spectrometer array, directly over a tiger stripe fissure. The peak temperatures, 86 Kelvin and 90 Kelvin (minus 305 and minus 298 degrees Fahrenheit) respectively, are averages over the composite infrared spectrometer field of view, and other composite and infrared spectrometer data suggest that much higher temperatures, up to at least 145 Kelvin (minus 199 degrees Fahrenheit), occur in narrow zones a few hundred meters wide along the tiger stripe fissures. See PIA07793 for a related image.
This image was taken nearly three times closer to the moon and is centered near longitude 120 west, latitude 82 south, and each composite infrared spectrometer field of view is 6.0 kilometers (3.7 miles) across.
This Cassini narrow-angle camera image was cropped and resized for presentation.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The composite infrared spectrometer team is based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The composite infrared spectrometer team homepage is http://cirs.gsfc.nasa.gov/. The imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org
This high-resolution stereo anaglyph of Saturn's moon Enceladus shows a region of craters softened by time and torn apart by tectonic stresses. Fractures 100 to 400 meters (330 to 1,300 feet) in width crosscut the terrain: One set trends northeast-southwest and another trends northwest-southeast. North is up. A region of "grooved terrain" is visible on the left. A broad canyon, its floor partly concealed by shadow, is notable on the right.
The images for this anaglyph were taken in visible light with Cassini's narrow-angle camera at distances from Enceladus ranging from about 25,700 kilometers (16,000 miles, red-colored image) to 5,200 kilometers (3,300 miles, blue-colored image) and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle ranging from 46 to 39 degrees. Pixel scale in the red image was 150 meters (490 feet) per pixel. Scale in the blue image was 30 meters (100 feet) per pixel.
A separate, non-stereo version of the scene, showing only the more-distant image, is also available (see PIA06213). The images have been contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
This image was taken during Cassini's extremely close encounter with Enceladus on Oct. 9, 2008.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 9, 2008, a distance of approximately 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 477 meters (1,566 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11119: Enceladus Oct. 9, 2008 Flyby - Posted Image #1 sur le site de la NASA.
Enceladus continues to exhale water ice into Saturn orbit, keeping the E ring topped off with tiny particles.
Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is a source of much interest for planetary scientists, being nearly seven times smaller in diameter than Earth's own moon, yet having active geology that appears to involve near-surface liquid water.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 11, 2006 at a distance of approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 164 degrees. Image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Few large craters are to be found in the wrinkled terrain of Enceladus, where the surface has been reworked by geologic processes presumably resulting from the moon's inner warmth.
Cassini spied the bright crescent of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) on July 23, 2006 at a distance of approximately 628,000 kilometers (391,000 miles). The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 103 degrees. Image scale is 4 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This image is the third skeet-shoot image taken during Cassini's very close flyby of Enceladus on Aug. 11, 2008. Cairo Sulcus is crossing the southern part of the image. The terrain is littered with blocks of ice. (The image is upside down from the skeet-shoot footprint shown here.) The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 11, 2008, a distance of approximately 2,446 kilometers (1,396 miles) above the surface of Enceladus. Image scale is approximately 18 meters (59 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11106: Enceladus Rev 80 Flyby Skeet Shoot #3 sur le site de la NASA.
Click on image for larger annotated version
This Cassini image was the fourth 'skeet shoot' narrow-angle image captured during the Oct. 31, 2008, flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
The source region for jet VI (see PIA08385) has been identified. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 31, 2008, at a distance of approximately 3,417 kilometers (2,135 miles) from Enceladus and at a sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 75 degrees. Image scale is 38 meters per pixel (125 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11108: Enceladus Rev 91 Flyby - Skeet Shoot #4 sur le site de la NASA.
Enceladus peeks over the limb of Dione during a partial occultation.
Dione (1,123 kilometers, or 698 miles across), like most of Saturn's icy moons, has a rather bright, reflective surface. But Enceladus is far and away brighter. As the most reflective body in the Solar System, Enceladus returns to space about 99 percent of the visible light that strikes it.
The spray that issues from the geologically active south polar region of Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) coats the moon in fresh, white ice and replenishes Saturn's E ring.
Images like this are extremely useful for scientists, as they show both moons together at approximately the same solar illumination angle. This gives a reference point for researchers to compare data about how the moons reflect light when they are not seen together on the sky.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 13, 2008. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 877,000 kilometers (545,000 miles) from Dione and 1.2 million kilometers (740,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel on Dione and 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel on Enceladus.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10500: Occulting Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
The plumes of water and other ice vapors jetting from the surface of Enceladus are one of the most exciting astronomical discoveries of the 21st century. These plumes originate from long linear fractures near the south pole of Enceladus. New topographic maps give us a fresh unprecedented look at this geologically young and active region. This perspective view shows several of these “tiger stripes” from which the plumes are venting. The stripes themselves consist of deep grooves flanked by two elevated ridges. The south polar terrains generally are also heavily fractured and deformed. These new topographic maps, constructed from stereo and shape-from-shading techniques by Dr. Paul Schenk (http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lpi/schenk/) at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, show that the stripes do not have a lot of relief. The flanking ridges are typically 75 to 200 meters high while the grooves in between the ridges are 150 to 300 meters deep. Intensely deformed ridges along the edge of the south polar terrains (lower right) have relief of up to 1 kilometer or so. Vertical relief has been exaggerated by a factor of 20 in this view to aid interpretation.
The raw data from which this product was developed were retrieved from the Planetary Data System's Cassini archives. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. (http://ciclops.org)
Voir l'image PIA10352: Tiger Stripes on Enceladus—Fracture Zones and Plumes Sources sur le site de la NASA.
Hints of the curving linear grooves that crisscross bright, icy Enceladus are just discernible in this image captured by the Cassini spacecraft. Enceladus is almost entirely composed of water ice and has a surface as bright as snow. Its diameter is 499 kilometers (310 miles).
This view shows principally the leading hemisphere of Enceladus. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Nov. 1, 2004, at a distance of 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 108 degrees. North is up. The image scale is about 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two and contrast enhanced to aid visibility of surface features.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
A ghostly view of Enceladus reveals the specter of the moon's icy plume of fine particles. Scientists continue to monitor the plume, where mission planning allows, using the Cassini spacecraft's imaging cameras.
This view looks toward northern latitudes on the trailing hemisphere of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across). North is up.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers on Oct. 31, 2006. Cassini was then at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 148 degrees. Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
For Enceladus, wrinkles mean the opposite of old age. This view of a crescent Enceladus shows a transition zone between a wrinkled and presumably younger region of terrain and an older, more heavily cratered region. The moon's geologically active southern polar region is seen at bottom.
The lit terrain shown here is on the side of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) that faces away from Saturn. North is up and rotated 20 degrees to the right.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 24, 2005 at a distance of approximately 108,000 kilometers (67,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 102 degrees. Image scale is 646 meters (2,118 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Enceladus is seen here, across the unilluminated side of Saturn's rings. A hint of the moon's active south polar region can be seen as a just slightly dark area at bottom.
This view was obtained from about 1 degree above the ringplane. Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) across.
The image was taken in polarized green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 27, 2007. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09786: Enceladus Afar sur le site de la NASA.
On Oct. 5, 2008, just after coming within 25 kilometers (15.6 miles) of the surface of Enceladus, NASA's Cassini captured this stunning mosaic as the spacecraft sped away from this geologically active moon of Saturn.
Craters and cratered terrains are rare in this view of the southern region of the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere. Instead, the surface is replete with fractures, folds, and ridges—all hallmarks of remarkable tectonic activity for a relatively small world. In this enhanced-color view, regions that appear blue-green are thought to be coated with larger grains than those that appear white or gray.
Portions of the tiger stripe fractures, or sulci, are visible along the terminator at lower right, surrounded by a circumpolar belt of mountains. The icy moon's famed jets emanate from at least eight distinct source regions, which lie on or near the tiger stripes. However, in this view, the most prominent feature is Labtayt Sulci, the approximately one-kilometer (0.6 miles) deep northward-trending chasm located just above the center of the mosaic.
Near the top, the conspicuous ridges are Ebony and Cufa Dorsae. This false-color mosaic was created from 28 images obtained at seven footprints, or pointing positions, by Cassini's narrow-angle camera. At each footprint, four images using filters sensitive to ultraviolet, visible and infrared light (spanning wavelengths from 338 to 930 nanometers) were combined to create the individual frames. The mosaic is an orthographic projection centered at 64.49 degrees south latitude, 283.87 west longitude, and it has an image scale of 196 kilometers (122.5 miles) per pixel. The original images ranged in resolution from 180 meters (594 feet) to 288 meters (950 feet) per pixel and were acquired at distances ranging from 30,000 to 48,000 kilometers (18,750 to 30,000 miles) as the spacecraft receded from Enceladus. The view was acquired at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 73 degrees.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11133: A Tectonic Feast sur le site de la NASA.
Wrinkled and cracked Enceladus hangs in the distance as the pitted ring moon Janus, at right, rounds the outer edge of the F ring.
Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is remarkable for its actively venting south polar region, while Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across) is known for its orbital swap with the moon Epimetheus.
The bright core of the F ring is perhaps 50 kilometers wide and contains numerous clumps and kinks. Dimmer, flanking ringlets on either side of the core wind into a tight spiral structure, discovered in Cassini images.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 21, 2006 at a distance of approximately 565,000 kilometers (351,000 miles) from Janus, 702,000 kilometers (436,000 miles) from Enceladus and 530,000 kilometers (329,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel on Janus and 4 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel on Enceladus.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Click on image for larger annotated version
Like hunters sighting a clay duck flying fast in the sky, this mosaic of Cassini images was made from 'skeet shoot' narrow-angle images 1, 2, 3, and 4, all captured during the Oct. 31, 2008, flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
The resolution of this mosaic is 12.3 meters (41 feet) per pixel and jet source VI (see PIA08385) is identified in the upper right.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11134: Enceladus Rev 91 Flyby - Skeet Shoot 1-4 Mosaic sur le site de la NASA.
Recent Cassini images of Saturn's moon Enceladus backlit by the sun show the fountain-like sources of the fine spray of material that towers over the south polar region. The image was taken looking more or less broadside at the "tiger stripe" fractures observed in earlier Enceladus images. It shows discrete plumes of a variety of apparent sizes above the limb of the moon.
The greatly enhanced and colorized image shows the enormous extent of the fainter, larger-scale component of the plume.
Imaging scientists, as reported in the journal Science on March 10, 2006, believe that the jets are geysers erupting from pressurized subsurface reservoirs of liquid water above 273 degrees Kelvin (0 degrees Celsius).
This caption was updated on March 9, 2006.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.Looking down onto the northern hemisphere of geologically complex Enceladus, the Cassini spacecraft spies softened, or "relaxed," craters and east-west trending fractures and faults.
The anti-Saturn hemisphere of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is lit here.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 12, 2006 at a distance of approximately 521,000 kilometers (324,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 101 degrees. Image scale is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
With Enceladus nearly in front of the Sun from Cassini's viewpoint, its icy jets become clearly visible against the background.
The view here is roughly perpendicular to the direction of the linear "tiger stripe" fractures, or sulci, from which the jets emanate. The jets here provide the extra glow at the bottom of the moon. The general brightness of the sky around the moon is the diffuse glow of Saturn's E ring, which is an end product of the jets' material being spread into a torus, or doughnut shape, around Saturn.
North on Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is up and rotated 20 degrees to the left.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 30, 2007. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 187,000 kilometers (116,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 157 degrees. Image scale is 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
During a distant flyby encounter with Enceladus, Cassini imaged the moon's wrinkled leading hemisphere. At the scale visible here, this region of the surface is generally devoid of impact craters, suggesting that the terrain has been modified and renewed during the moon's history.
To the north lies a heavily cratered and presumably older region. The sinuous boundary of the geologically active south polar region is seen at bottom. North on Enceladus (504 kilometers, 313 miles across) is toward the top of the image.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 30, 2007. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 108,000 kilometers (67,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 75 degrees. Image scale is 644 meters (2,111 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10483: Youthful Wrinkles sur le site de la NASA.
This image is the first skeet-shoot image taken during Cassini's very close flyby of Enceladus on Aug. 11, 2008. It captures a region near the Cairo Sulcus on Enceladus' south polar terrain that is littered with blocks of ice. (The image is upside down from the skeet-shoot footprint shown here.) The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 11, 2008, a distance of approximately 1,288 kilometers (800 miles) above the surface of Enceladus. Image scale is approximately 10 meters (33 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11105: Enceladus Rev 80 Flyby Skeet Shoot #1 sur le site de la NASA.
This false-color, close-up look at Saturn's moon Enceladus yields new insight into the different processes that have shaped the moon's icy surface.
Extending through the center of this image is a system of rifts 3 kilometers wide (2 mile) and lanes of grooved terrain 20 kilometers wide (12 mile), which separate two distinct geological provinces. To the right of the boundary is older, cratered terrain - a region peppered with craters ranging from 10 kilometers (6 miles) in diameter, down craters near the limit of resolution. The region is believed to be old because it has accumulated a relatively high density of impact craters over time and the topography is soft and muted, suggesting that it is covered by a layer of particulate materials. The cratered terrain is cut crosswise by numerous faults and fractures ranging in width from hundreds of meters to a few kilometers.
On the left side of the scene are grooved, icy plains. This broad, relatively flat region is scored by an extensive band of parallel grooves that appear to subdivide the surface into narrow lanes approximately 1 kilometer or half a mile wide. The low abundance of impact craters and crisp relief on topographic features here imply that this region is geologically much younger than the cratered terrain at the right.
This view is a composite of images taken using filters sensitive to ultraviolet (centered at 338 nanometers), green (centered at 568 nanometers), and near-infrared (centered at 930 nanometers) light, and has been processed to accentuate subtle color differences.
The uppermost surface of these terrains has a relatively uniform pinkish cast in this picture, suggesting that it is covered with materials of homogeneous composition and grain size. However, many of the fractures reveal a distinctly different color (represented by greenish tones in this false-color image) than the typical surface materials in this region. The fractures seem to penetrate down to a material that is texturally or compositionally different than most surface materials. One possibility is that the walls of the fractures expose outcrops of solid ice or ice with different grain-sizes compared to powdery surface materials that mantle flat-lying surfaces. It is also possible that the color identifies some compositional difference between buried ice and ice at the surface.
The scene is located on the side of Enceladus that faces away from Saturn. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera when the spacecraft was at a distance of approximately 25,700 kilometers (15,969 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 46 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 150 meters (490 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Icy Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) across.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were taken using the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 17, 2006 at a distance of approximately 200,000 kilometers (100,000 miles) from Enceladus. The image scale is 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This false-color Cassini mosaic of Saturn's moon Enceladus captures in a single view, much of the frigid moon's diverse geology.
Cratered terrain dominates most of the scene. The relatively dense accumulation of impact craters implies that this terrain is among the oldest on the moon's surface. Near the bottom of the picture is a crater 20 kilometers wide (12-mile) with a prominent dome-shaped structure in its center. The entire area is transected by a complex web of fractures and faults; some are as narrow as a few hundred meters, others as wide as 5 kilometers (3 miles).
The rims and interiors of many craters seem to be sliced by a pervasive system of narrow, parallel grooves into slabs or lanes that typically are a kilometer (about a half-mile) in width. The widely varied appearances of fractures in this region attest to the fact that the surface of Enceladus has been shaped by a long history of intense tectonic activity. The oldest fractures are characterized by a soft, muted appearance and are overprinted by numerous, superimposed impact craters. More recent fractures exhibit topographic relief that is relatively "crisp" in appearance, and they appear to slice through pre-existing impact craters and older fractures.
On the right side of the image is a conspicuous and twisted network of ridges and troughs forming a distinct tectonic region on Enceladus. The paucity of craters and the sharp appearance of the topography in this area indicate that this is a relatively young terrain on Enceladus.
This view is a composite of images taken using filters sensitive to ultraviolet (centered at 338 nanometers), green (centered at 568 nanometers), and near-infrared (centered at 930 nanometers) light, and has been processed to accentuate subtle color differences. The uppermost surface of these terrains has a relatively uniform grayish color in this picture, suggesting that it is covered with materials of homogeneous composition and grain size. However, many of the fractures reveal a distinctly different color (represented by pale-bluish tones in this false-color image) than the typical surface materials. These "colored" fractures seem to penetrate down to a material that is texturally or compositionally different than most of the material at the surface.
One possibility is that the walls of the fractures expose outcrops of solid ice, or ice with different grain-sizes compared to powdery surface materials that blanket flat-lying surfaces. It is also possible that the color identifies some compositional difference between buried ice and ice at the surface. The distinct coloration of "youthful" fracture walls are nearly absent in the oldest fractures. This is consistent with the possibility that the older fractures are covered with a drape of particulate material which mantles nearly all the oldest features on the satellite.
In the early 1980's, NASA's Voyager mission to the outer planets revealed a strikingly similar arrangement of terrains on Miranda, an icy moon of Uranus (see PIA00141). Miranda is 470-kilometers-wide (290 miles), nearly as large as Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles wide). The similarities in size and tectonic history on these objects may suggest that remarkably similar physical processes have controlled the separate geological evolutions of these bodies.
The images that comprise this mosaic were obtained during Cassini's closest approach to Enceladus on March 9, 2005. The images was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 29,000 kilometers (18,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 46 degrees. Resolution in the original images is about 170 meters (560 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
The topography of planetary surfaces tells us much about the geologic history and forces involved, and volcanically active Enceladus is no exception. New topographic maps give us a fresh unprecedented look at this tortured moon. This perspective view shows the oldest most heavily cratered terrains on the surface. Long ridges and grooves and numerous younger narrow parallel fractures cut across many of these craters, showing that even this ancient terrain has not escaped the extensive tectonic deformation that has wracked this small icy moon. The larger craters in the foreground are typically 2 kilometers across and a few hundred meters deep. This perspective view was constructed from digital elevation models produced by Dr. Paul Schenk (http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lpi/schenk/) at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, TX, based on stereo and shape-from-shading analysis of Cassini images acquired in March 2005. Vertical relief has been exaggerated by a factor of 10 to aid interpretation.
The raw data from which this product was developed were retrieved from the Planetary Data System's Cassini archives. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. (http://ciclops.org)
Voir l'image PIA10351: Ancient Cratered Terrains on Enceladus—A Complex Deformation History sur le site de la NASA.
Looking beyond Saturn's south pole, this was the Cassini spacecraft's view of the distant, icy moon Enceladus on July 28, 2004. The planet itself shows few obvious features at these ultraviolet wavelengths, due to scattering of light by molecules of the gases high in the atmosphere. Enceladus is 499 kilometers (310 miles) wide.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera at a distance of 7.4 million kilometers (4.6 million miles) from Saturn through a filter sensitive to ultraviolet wavelengths of light. The image scale is 44 kilometers (27 miles) per pixel of Saturn.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Jets of icy particles burst from Saturn’s moon Enceladus in this brief movie sequence of four images taken on Nov. 27, 2005. The sensational discovery of active eruptions on a third outer solar system body (Io and Triton are the others) is surely one of the great highlights of the Cassini mission.
Imaging scientists, as reported in the journal Science on March 10, 2006, believe that the jets are geysers erupting from pressurized subsurface reservoirs of liquid water above 273 degrees Kelvin (0 degrees Celsius).
Images taken in January 2005 appeared to show the plume emanating from the fractured south polar region of Enceladus, but the visible plume was only slightly brighter than the background noise in the image, because the lighting geometry was not suitable to reveal the true details of the feature. This potential sighting, in addition to the detection of the icy particles in the plume by other Cassini instruments, prompted imaging scientists to target Enceladus again with exposures designed to confirm the validity of the earlier plume sighting.
The new views show individual jets, or plume sources, that contribute to the plume with much greater visibility than the earlier images. The full plume towers over the 505-kilometer-wide (314-mile) moon and is at least as tall as the moon's diameter.
The four 10-second exposures were taken over the course of about 36 minutes at approximately 12 minute intervals.
Enceladus rotates about 7.5 degrees in longitude over the course of the frames, and most of the observed changes in the appearances of the jets is likely attributable to changes in the viewing geometry. However, some of the changes may be due to actual variation in the flow from the jets on a time scale of tens of minutes.
Additionally, the shift of the sources seen here should provide information about their location in front of and behind the visible limb (edge) of Enceladus.
These images were obtained using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at distances between 144,350 and 149,520 kilometers (89,695 and 92,907 miles) from Enceladus and at a phase angle of about 161 degrees. Image scale is about 900 meters (2,950 feet) per pixel on Enceladus.
This caption was updated on March 9, 2006.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.Saturn's bright moon Enceladus hovers here, in front of a rings darkened by Saturn's shadow. Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) across.
This view is from less than one degree beneath the ring plane. If seen from directly beneath the rings, the planet's giant shadow would appear as an elongated half-ellipse; the acute viewing angle makes the shadow look more like a strip here. (See PIA06193, for a different viewing angle). The dark shadow first takes a bite out of the rings at the right, where the distant, outermost ring material appears to taper and fade.
Ring features visible in this image from the outer ring edge inward include: the A ring, the Cassini Division and the B ring. The C ring is the darker region that dominates the rings here. The two gaps visible near the center and below the left of the center are the Titan Gap, about 77,800 kilometers (48,300 miles) from Saturn, and an unnamed gap about 75,800 kilometers (47,100 miles) from the planet.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 7, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (650,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 30 degrees. The pixel scale is 6 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
As Cassini approached the intriguing ice world of Enceladus for its extremely close flyby on July 14, 2005, the spacecraft obtained images in several wavelengths that were used to create this false-color composite view.
The surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus shows a range of crater ages, including regions that have very few discernable craters at Cassini's resolution. This observation indicates that there have been multiple episodes of activity on Enceladus spread over some fraction of its history. The resurfacing mechanism appears to be dominated by tectonic fracturing. As of yet, there is no clear evidence for release of liquid to the surface in either icy volcanic flows or geysers.
The south polar region (seen here at the lower right) has a distinctive tectonic structure that sets it apart from the rest of the satellite. Its outer boundary is marked by a series of pronounced tectonic "gashes" that form a hoop-like boundary, near 60 degrees south latitude. In this image, this fault zone forms the transition region from the presumably older, cratered terrain in the north to the younger, nearly crater-free region in the south.
This false-color view is a composite of individual frames obtained using filters sensitive to ultraviolet (centered at 338 nanometers), green (centered at 568 nanometers) and infrared light (centered at 752 nanometers). The view has been enhanced to accentuate subtle color differences and fine-scale surface features.
The Sun illuminates Enceladus from the lower left, leaving part of the moon in shadow. This view shows the anti-Saturn hemisphere, centered at 42 degrees south latitude, 167 west longitude.
The images comprising this view were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of about 112,100 kilometers (69,700 miles) from Enceladus, and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 46 degrees. The image scale is about 670 meters (2,200 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
Fine topographic detail and color variations are revealed in this 11-image, false color mosaic taken during Cassini's second close flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus, on March 9, 2005.
This mosaic, a high-resolution cropped section of the full-disk mosaic available in PIA08354), shows the center of the anti-Saturnian hemisphere of Enceladus -- the side of Enceladus that always faces away from Saturn. The left portion of the mosaic is dominated by Diyar Planitia. Like Sarandib Planitia, observed in the previous Enceladus flyby of February 2005, the region is characterized by low ridges and troughs. Throughout this region, fractures of all sizes cut across Diyar Planitia and the older, cratered terrain at center and right.
Many of the younger fractures have blue-green walls, revealing coarse-grained water ice in the top layers of Enceladus' lithosphere, compared to the fine-grained ice that coats much of Enceladus' surface. The blue-green color is very similar to the coatings of the south polar "tiger stripes." The color here is greener than the features in the south polar mosaic released in 2005 (see PIA07800) due to the use of clear-filter images, instead of green, in the latter mosaic.
This mosaic consists of 11 false-color footprints (33 images total) taken by the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera. The mosaic uses an ultraviolet filter centered at 338 nanometers for blue, a green filter centered at 568 nanometers for green and a near-infrared filter centered at 930 nanometers for red, thus covering a wider spectrum region than the human eye. To create a single mosaic, the images were reprojected into an orthographic projection with a pixel scale of 45 meters per pixel. The region is centered at 3.9 degrees north latitude, 208.9 degrees west longitude and covers an area 233 kilometers (145 miles) by 154 kilometers (96 miles) in size.
The original images were taken by the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera from distances ranging from 4,300 to 27,050 kilometers (2,670 to 16,810 miles). The images have a phase, or sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, angle of 45 degrees. Image scale is 45 meters (150 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This high-resolution image from Cassini shows a region of "smooth plains" terrain on the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus, located slightly north of the equator on the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere. The area is 70 kilometer by 84 kilometer (43 mile by 52 miles).
The image shows a variety of tectonic features that attest to Enceladus' dynamic geological history. At the top of the image is a relatively fresh-looking crevasse system with individual fractures more than a kilometer wide. The crevasse system cross-cuts a complex northeast-to-southwest-trending system of older faults. A 12-kilometer-wide (7-mile-wide) band of crudely aligned, chevron-shaped features runs down the center of the image.
Among the most intriguing features in this view are a series of dark, small spots, 125 to 750 meters (400 to 2,500 feet) in diameter. The dark spots often seem to be aligned in chains parallel to narrow fractures. The contrast of the dark features with the surrounding bright terrain suggests that they may be compositionally distinct, but their origin is a new mystery.
The orientation of the image is such that north is approximately 30 degrees clockwise from the bottom of the frame. Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) in diameter.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Feb. 17, 2005, at a distance of 21,208 kilometers (13,178 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 27 degrees. Pixel scale in the image is 125 meters (410 feet) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
These two side-by-side images compare a "twisted" sea-floor spreading feature on Earth, known as an Offset Spreading Center (OSC), to a very similar looking twisted break, or axial discontinuity, in the Damascus Sulcus "tiger stripe" on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The image of Enceladus was acquired by NASA's Cassini spacecraft imaging science sub-system during one of its four close targeted flybys of Enceladus in March, August and October 2008.
The image on the left shows a shaded relief map of bathymetry (or sonar-like topography) data along a spreading ridge on the East Pacific Rise near 9.5 degrees north latitude and 104 minutes west longitude. On Earth, OSC's occur only along fast-spreading ridges—ones that spread faster than about 100 millimeters (4 inches) per year. They do not occur on slow-spreading ridges, like the famous Mid-Atlantic Ridge where spreading rates are often less than 20 millimeters (0.7 inches) per year.
The axial discontinuity on Enceladus' Damascus Sulcus, shown in the image on the right, twists in the same helical way that the OSC does on Earth. However, the morphological resemblance is no guarantee that both features are caused by fast spreading.
On Earth OSCs form when two nearly parallel spreading ridges lengthen along their ridge (or long) axes. As the lengthening tips of the ridges pass each other side-by-side in opposite directions, shear forces caused by tectonic spreading between them force the two tips to twist around each other. The twisting tip of each one eventually merges with the "neck" of the other in a "yin-yang" shaped pattern. The result is an oval shaped basin that is surrounded by the twisted ridge tips.
On Enceladus, the twisted features have not produced an oval basin, but the pattern of the twist is very similar to the terrestrial OSC and probably similar tectonic shear forces, perhaps even tectonic spreading, resulted in this twisted shape. Note that the Enceladus image has been flipped right-to-left to make comparison to the sea-floor feature easier to see.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Sea-floor bathymetry data ©2008 MGDS; www.marine-geo.org from Carbotte, S.M., R. Arko, D.N. Chayes, W. Haxby, K. Lehnert, S. O'Hara, W.B.F. Ryan, R.A. Weissel, T. Shipley, L. Gahagan, K. Johnson, T. Shank (2004), New Integrated Data Management System for Ridge2000 and MARGINS Research, Eos Trans. AGU, 85(51), 553, DOI: 10.1029/2004EO510002.]
Voir l'image PIA11139: Enceladus Offset Spreading Center sur le site de la NASA.
A target of intense interest to Cassini mission scientists is Enceladus, whose wrinkled and frozen crescent is seen here with Saturn's rings. The planet's dark shadow bisects the ringscape.
The illuminated terrain seen here is on the moon's trailing hemisphere. North on Enceladus is up and rotated 20 degrees to the left. Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) across.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini narrow-angle camera on Oct. 13, 2005 at a distance of approximately 1.2 million kilometers (700,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 106 degrees. The image scale is 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.Saturn's icy moon Enceladus hovers above Saturn's exquisite rings in this color view from Cassini. The rings, made of nearly pure water ice, have also become somewhat contaminated by meteoritic dust during their history, which may span several hundred million years. Enceladus shares the rings' nearly pure water ice composition, but appears to have eluded dust contamination through resurfacing processes that scientists are still trying to understand. Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) across.
Dust affects the rings' color, while differences in brightness are attributable to varying particle sizes and concentrations.
The images for this natural color view were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 5, 2005, at a distance of approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Saturn through red, green and blue spectral filters. The image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
A masterpiece of deep time and wrenching gravity, the tortured surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus and its fascinating ongoing geologic activity tell the story of the ancient and present struggles of one tiny world. This is a story that is recounted by imaging scientists in a paper published in the journal Science on March 10, 2006.
The enhanced color view of Enceladus seen here is largely of the southern hemisphere and includes the south polar terrain at the bottom of the image.
Ancient craters remain somewhat pristine in some locales, but have clearly relaxed in others. Northward-trending fractures, likely caused by a change in the moon's rate of rotation and the consequent flattening of the moon's shape, rip across the southern hemisphere. The south polar terrain is marked by a striking set of `blue' fractures and encircled by a conspicuous and continuous chain of folds and ridges, testament to the forces within Enceladus that have yet to be silenced.
The mosaic was created from 21 false-color frames taken during the Cassini spacecraft's close approaches to Enceladus on March 9 and July 14, 2005. Images taken using filters sensitive to ultraviolet, visible and infrared light (spanning wavelengths from 338 to 930 nanometers) were combined to create the individual frames.
The mosaic is an orthographic projection centered at 46.8 degrees south latitude, 188 degrees west longitude, and has an image scale of 67 meters (220 feet) per pixel. The original images ranged in resolution from 67 meters per pixel to 350 meters (1,150 feet) per pixel and were taken at distances ranging from 11,100 to 61,300 kilometers (6,900 to miles) from Enceladus.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Cassini spies the wrinkled, fractured and remarkably crater-poor terrain of Enceladus. Scientists are working to understand what causes the moon's surprising geologic activity (see PIA07759).
North on Enceladus (505 kilometers, 314 miles across) is up and rotated 20 degrees to the left.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 8, 2006 at a distance of approximately 560,000 kilometers (348,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 103 degrees. Image scale is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Movie Clip
Click on the image for the movie
This video demonstrates two examples of the interpretation of tectonic spreading along the "tiger stripe" fractures in the south polar terrain of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
The first part of the video shows a simple example in which an old relict tiger stripe is believed to have lost its tip after it was sheared off by tectonic forces and pushed away from its parent by spreading. In the meantime, the parent tiger stripe has managed to regenerate a replacement tip, probably by the creation of new icy crust from upwelling soft ice. The orphaned "clone" now sits by itself, connected to the parent only by two parallel fault lines.
The movie shows that, if the orphaned tiger stripe tip can be slid along the parallel faults back into place on the parent rift, the fit is remarkably good. Striated material between the clone and the replacement tip represents new icy crust material that must have been created during the spreading process.
The second part of the video demonstrates how this video-reconstruction technique can be used to infer a possible spreading history of the region between two tiger stripes: Alexandria Sulcus and Cairo Sulcus. The process begins by snipping-out and closing the gap that corresponds to Alexandria Sulcus and its upraised flanks. The gap is closed by matching the remaining right and left edges like a jigsaw puzzle. The closure is accomplished by sliding along a prominent fault nearly perpendicular to one end of Alexandria. This segment of the video is repeated four times with arrows that mark previously offset features that come into alignment after Alexandria is closed.
Next, Cairo Sulcus is closed along a lower fault that is parallel to the one along which Alexandria was closed. After the Cairo is removed, the closure is continued along the same fault until all of the intervening terrain has been removed. During this process, a mysterious 14-kilometer-sized elliptical feature appears by matching a semi-circular feature that previously existed on the right side of Cairo with the left side of an oval-shaped feature that exists between Alexandria and Cairo. In this way, the gap between Cairo and Alexandria can be closed completely, but there remains a length of the fault that suggests even more spreading may have occurred. Closing the gap all the way along this fault results in the reappearance of a feature that resembles the elliptical structure seen earlier. This feature is perhaps a relict impact crater or the surface expression of a rising warm diapir or icy convection cell.
This video was created based on images of the south pole of Enceladus taken from this map, see PIA11126.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11137: Reconstructing the Past on Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
This close-up view of Saturn's moon Enceladus looks toward the moon's terminator (the transition from day to night) and shows a distinctive pattern of continuous, ridged, slightly curved and roughly parallel faults within the moon's southern polar latitudes. These surface features have been informally referred to by imaging scientists as "tiger stripes" due to their distinctly stripe-like appearance when viewed in false color (see PIA06249).
Illumination of the scene is from the lower left. The image was obtained in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 14, 2005, at a distance of about 20,720 kilometers (12,880 miles) from Enceladus, and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 46 degrees. The image scale is 122 meters (400 feet) per pixel. The image's contrast has been enhanced to aid visibility of surface features.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
This Cassini view of Enceladus hints at the curvilinear, groove-like features that crisscross the moon's surface, as seen in images from NASA's Voyager spacecraft.
The image shows the trailing hemisphere of Enceladus, which is the side opposite the moon's direction of motion in its orbit. Enceladus is 499 kilometers (310 miles) across.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Oct. 27, 2004, at a distance of about 766,000 kilometers (476,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 34 degrees. The image scale is 4.6 kilometers (2.8 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Multiple jets of icy particles are blasted into space by the active venting on Saturn's moon Enceladus.
This image was acquired in a viewing geometry that makes the tiny particles in the Enceladus plume easy to see.
This view was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 18, 2006, at a distance of approximately 930,000 kilometers (578,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 154 degrees. Image scale is 6 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This image was taken during Cassini's extremely close encounter with Enceladus on Oct. 9, 2008.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 9, 2008, a distance of approximately 42,000 kilometers (26,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 503 meters (1,650 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11121: Enceladus Oct. 9, 2008 Flyby - Posted Image #3 sur le site de la NASA.
Cassini took this image of the ropy, taffy-like topography on Saturn's moon Enceladus as it soared above the icy moon on Feb. 17, 2005.
This view, about 60 kilometers across (37 miles), shows several different kinds of ridge-and-trough topography, indicative of a variety of horizontal forces near the surface of this 505-kilometer (314-mile) diameter satellite.
Several different kinds of deformation are visible, and a small population of impact craters shows that this is some of the younger terrain on Enceladus. Sunlight illuminates the scene from the bottom.
Interestingly, the topographic relief is only about one kilometer, which is quite low for a small, low gravity satellite. However, this is consistent with other evidence that points to interior melting and resurfacing in Enceladus' history.
This view was obtained in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera, at a distance of 10,750 kilometers (6,680 miles) from Enceladus, and at Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 32 degrees. Image scale is 60 meters (197 feet) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.
A stereo or 3-D version of this region on Enceladus is also available (see PIA06189).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
As the Cassini spacecraft began its August 2008 flyby of Enceladus, the spacecraft approached over the moon's cratered north pole. Cassini acquired this view as the icy moon grew ever larger in its field of view.
In addition to the sunlit crescent at upper right, the faint glow at bottom indicates a secondary source of illumination: reflected sunlight from Saturn.
The view looks toward high northern latitudes on Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) from a perspective 71 degrees north of the moon's equator. The north pole is in shadow at center.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 11, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 448,000 kilometers (278,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 113 degrees. Image scale at maximum resolution is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10471: Approaching Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
This wide-angle view is one of the highest resolution images yet acquired by Cassini and shows what appears to be a geologically youthful, tectonically fractured terrain.
A higher resolution, narrow-angle view of the center of the terrain shown here is available (see PIA06252), as well as a comparison view showing the position of the narrow-angle image within this image (see PIA06250).
The image was taken during Cassini's very close flyby of Enceladus on July 14, 2005, from a distance of approximately 208 kilometers (129 miles) above Enceladus. Resolution in the image is about 37 meters (121 feet) per pixel. The image's contrast has been enhanced to improve the visibility of surface features.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
Enceladus shows off its tortured south polar terrain, which is crosscut by the roughly parallel furrows and ridges called sulci, or informally, "tiger stripes."
Several features on Enceladus were recently given names by the International Astronomical Union in accord with the naming convention for the icy moon, which draws from characters and places from The Arabian Nights. The four most prominent sulci are named Alexandria, Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus.
Lit terrain in this view is on the anti-Saturn side of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across).
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 8, 2006 at a distance of approximately 399,000 kilometers (248,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 75 degrees. Image scale is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
A false color look reveals subtle details on Enceladus that are not visible in natural color views.
The now-familiar bluish appearance (in false color views) of the southern "tiger stripe" features and other relatively youthful fractures is almost certainly attributable to larger grain sizes of relatively pure ice, compared to most surface materials.
On the "tiger stripes," this coarse-grained ice is seen in the colored deposits flanking the fractures as well as inside the fractures. On older fractures on other areas of Enceladus, the blue ice mostly occurs on the exposed wall scarps.
The color difference across the moon's surface (a subtle gradation from upper left to lower right) could indicate broad-scale compositional differences across the moon's surface. It is also possible that the gradation in color is due to differences in the way the brightness of Enceladus changes toward the limb, a characteristic which is highly dependent on wavelength and viewing geometry.
See PIA07709 for a monochrome version of this view.
Terrain on the trailing hemisphere of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is seen here. North is up.
The view was created by combining images taken using ultraviolet, green and infrared spectral filters, and then was processed to accentuate subtle color differences. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 17, 2006 at a distance of approximately 153,000 kilometers (95,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 29 degrees. Image scale is 912 meters (2,994 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
With its excess warmth, water ice jets and huge vapor plume laced with simple organic materials, Enceladus is an important part of the quest to understand environments compatible with the chemistry of life as we know it. The sulci, or "tiger stripe" fractures, in the south polar region are visible at bottom -- the view here is parallel to the direction of the sulci.
The view looks toward the anti-Saturn hemisphere on the moon's trailing side. North on Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) is towards the top of the image.
This false-color view is a composite of individual frames obtained using filters sensitive to ultraviolet (centered at 338 nanometers), green (centered at 568 nanometers) and infrared light (centered at 1002 nanometers). The broad range of wavelengths exaggerates subtle color variations across the moon's surface.
The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 11, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 739,000 kilometers (459,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 36 degrees. Image scale is 4 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10403: Icy Oasis sur le site de la NASA.
The finest details on the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus are revealed in this 30-meter (100-foot) per-pixel, enhanced-color image taken during Cassini's closest-ever encounter with Enceladus on March 9, 2005.
The surface of Enceladus is almost uniformly white and even though the natural color of this scene has been exaggerated in intensity, no obvious departure from the uniform hue is apparent. The image was also processed to enhance contrast while avoid saturation of the brightest parts of the scene. Hence, the surface does not have the brightness of fresh snow, as it would appear to the human eye.
The Sun is illuminating the surface from the left of the image and at a low enough angle that the rugged ridge crests near upper left (which range in height from 50 to 100 meters or 164 to 328 feet) cast dramatic shadows, as at the top center of the image. The origin of the very small dark spots in the ridged terrain is uncertain. They could be shadows cast by small, building-sized outcrops (approximately 60-meter or 200-feett high) just at the limits of resolution.
Intriguingly, the craters in this scene are quite subdued, indicating that they have been degraded by some process. The craters clearly predate most of the fractures.
Additionally, multiple sets of fractures running in different directions can be seen. One set above the lower right has a gentle appearance similar to that of the craters. In contrast, the fractures running along the left are fresher. By studying differences in the morphology and patterns of the fractures, scientists will be able to learn about Enceladus' crust and how it, and geologic processes acting within it, have changed over time.
Images obtained using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this view. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 5,200 kilometers (3,200 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 39 degrees. The scene is centered on a region at -3 degrees latitude and 218 degrees longitude.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Enceladus appears as a rather bland orb in this far-off snapshot, but the dark markings near its south pole belie that assumption. The markings, called sulci, are long, roughly parallel fractures from which a spray of icy particles escapes into the void, forming Saturn's E ring.
This view looks toward the Saturn-facing hemisphere on Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across). North is up.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 27, 2007 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 930 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 615,000 kilometers (382,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 3 degrees. Image scale is 4 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
The Cassini spacecraft acquired this view of Enceladus just after the spacecraft passed within 25 kilometers (15 miles) of the surface on Oct. 9, 2008. Remarkably, only a handful of craters are visible in this view, indicating the relatively young age of this surface.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 9, 2008 at a distance of approximately 38,000 kilometers (24,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 73 degrees. Image scale is 228 meters (746 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10515: Over the Limb sur le site de la NASA.
The moon Enceladus seems to hover above the outer reaches of Saturn's B ring. Below and to the right of Enceladus, four faint bands lie in the center of the dark Cassini Division.
Recently, scientists have speculated that the particles that make up the dense B and A rings might be more like fluffy snowballs than hard ice cubes. The conclusion is based on temperature data obtained by the Cassini spacecraft.
Enceladus' diameter is 505 kilometers (314 miles). The icy moon is on the near side of the rings in this view.
This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 15, 2005, at a distance of approximately 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Enceladus. The image scale is 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel on Enceladus.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Interesting geological details on Enceladus can be seen in modest-resolution Cassini spacecraft views like this one. At bottom is the wrinkled and generally crater-free terrain near the moon's south pole, which contains the actively venting "tiger stripe" fractures.
Multiple funnel-shaped tectonic patterns are visible above (north of) the polar region; in higher resolution Cassini images these are seen to be folded regions of ridges and troughs (see PIA06191). North of these features are long, north-south trending fractures.
The view looks toward the southern hemisphere on the trailing side of Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across).The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 26, 2008 at a distance of approximately 516,000 kilometers (320,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10436: Distant Details on Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
During its very close flyby of Enceladus on March 9, 2005, Cassini took images of parts of the icy moon from different viewing angles, allowing the construction of stereo views. These "3-D" views, such as the one presented here, are helpful in interpreting the complex topography of this intriguing little world.
This scene is an icy landscape that has been scored by tectonic forces. Many of the craters in this terrain have been heavily modified, such as the 10-kilometer-wide (6-mile-wide) crater near upper right that has prominent north-south fracturing along its northeastern slope.
The anaglyph has been rotated so that north on Enceladus is up.
The images for this anaglyph were taken in visible light with the narrow angle camera, at distances from Enceladus ranging from about 26,800 kilometers (16,700 miles, red-colored image) to 11,900 kilometers (7,400 miles, blue-colored image) and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle ranging from 46 to 44 degrees. Pixel scale in the red image was 160 meters (525 feet) per pixel. Scale in the blue image was 70 meters (230 feet) per pixel.
A separate, non-stereo version of the scene, showing only the red image, is also available (see PIA06217). The images have been contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
High resolution annotated version
Cassini shot past the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus on Aug. 11, 2008, acquiring a set of seven high-resolution images targeting known jet source locations on the moon's "tiger stripe" fractures, or sulci. Two of those images are presented in this mosaic; the other five images are shown in PIA11114.
Features on Enceladus are named for characters and places from "The Arabian Nights," and the four most prominent sulci are named Alexandria, Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus. Here, Damascus Sulcus runs across the center, from left to right.
One highly anticipated result of this flyby was to pinpoint previously identified source locations for the jets that blast icy particles, water vapor and trace organics into space (see PIA08385). The yellow circles on the annotated version of the mosaic indicate source locations II and III identified in PIA08385).
Scientists are using these new images to study geologic activity associated with the sulci, and effects on the surrounding terrain. This information, coupled with observations by Cassini's other instruments, may answer the question of whether reservoirs of liquid water exist beneath the surface.
The mosaic consists of two images obtained with the clear spectral filters on Cassini's narrow-angle camera. The view is an orthographic projection with an image scale of 24 meters (79 feet) per pixel. The area shown here is centered on 81.2 degrees south latitude, 309.9 degrees west longitude. The original images ranged in resolution from 27 to 30 meters (89 to 98 feet) per pixel and were taken at distances ranging from 4,200 to 4,742 kilometers (2,610 to 2,947 miles) from Enceladus.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11113: Damascus Sulcus on Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
Cassini spied the moon Enceladus in the distance beyond Saturn's south pole in this image from Sept. 19, 2004.
This view was taken in wavelengths of ultraviolet light where gas molecules in Saturn's high atmosphere scatter a great deal of sunlight. Since Enceladus (499 kilometers, or 310 miles, across) has an unusually high reflectivity, its surface reflects even more of the light falling on it than Saturn does, making the moon appear very bright compared the planet. Enceladus was dimmed in brightness by a factor of three during processing of the image, in order to make its brightness comparable to that of Saturn.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera at a distance of 8.3 million kilometers (5.2 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 49 kilometers (30 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
High resolution annotated version
Cassini shot past the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus on Aug. 11, 2008, acquiring a set of seven high-resolution images targeting known jet source locations on the moon's "tiger stripe" fractures, or sulci.
Five of those images are presented in this mosaic; the other two images are shown in PIA11113. Features on Enceladus are named for characters and places from "The Arabian Nights," and the four most prominent sulci are named Alexandria, Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus. Here, Baghdad Sulcus runs across the top mosaic tile, from lower left to upper right. Cairo Sulcus runs from left to right just beneath the center tile.
One highly anticipated result of this flyby was to pinpoint previously identified source locations for the jets that blast icy particles, water vapor and trace organics into space (see PIA08385). The yellow circles on the annotated version of the mosaic indicate source locations I and V identified in PIA08385.
Scientists are using these new images to study geologic activity associated with the sulci, and effects on the surrounding terrain. This information, coupled with observations by Cassini's other instruments, may answer the question of whether reservoirs of liquid water exist beneath the surface.
The mosaic consists of five images taken with the clear spectral filters on Cassini's narrow-angle camera. The view is an orthographic projection with an image scale of 14.5 meters (47.5 feet) per pixel. The area shown here is centered on 81.6 degrees south latitude, 56.5 degrees west longitude. The original images ranged in resolution from 10 to 24 meters (33 to 79 feet) per pixel and were taken at distances ranging from 1,288 to 3,600 kilometers (800 to 2,237 miles) from Enceladus.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11114: Baghdad and Cairo Sulci on Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
Click on image for larger annotated version
This three-image mosaic is the highest resolution view yet obtained of Enceladus' north polar region. The view looks southward over cratered plains from high above the north pole of Enceladus.
Cassini's March 2008 flyby of Enceladus was designed to directly investigate the ongoing plume activity at the moon's south pole, but the path of the spacecraft allowed investigation of older evidence for internal activity near the north pole.
Compared to much of the moon's southern hemisphere—the south polar region in particular—the north polar region is much older and covered with craters. These craters are captured at different stages of disruption and alteration by tectonic activity and probably past heating from below. Many of the craters seen here are sliced by small parallel cracks that seem to be ubiquitous throughout the old cratered terrains on Enceladus. The mosaic also shows a variety of impact crater shapes, some with bowed-up floors and smaller craters within, very likely indicating that the icy crust in this area was at some time warmer than at present. While this conclusion was previously reached from NASA Voyager spacecraft images, these new data provide a much more detailed look at the fractures that modify the surface. This data will give a significantly improved comparison of the geologic history at the satellite's north pole with that at the south pole.
Two prominent craters in this view, Ali Baba and Aladdin (the two overlapping craters near center), are among the largest craters known on Enceladus.
Several areas of much younger terrain are visible in this mosaic, including Samarkand Sulci, an area of disrupted terrain that runs north-south at left of center, and the "leading hemisphere terrain," a region, seen at right, filled with tectonic fractures, ridges and "ridged terrain."
Samarkand Sulci slices through some prominent craters that were seen in Voyager images. At that time, it was thought that the portions of the craters that extend into Samarkand were completely destroyed by whatever process formed Samarkand. However, Cassini images show remnants of the crater rims that have survived. This new insight provides a benchmark for measuring how tectonic processes modify older terrains, and will also help imaging scientists develop a more accurate timeline for the geologic history of these terrains.
Lit terrain seen here is on the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across).
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 12, 2008. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 32,000 kilometers (20,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 115 degrees. Image scale is 176 meters (577 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA08409: The North Polar Region of Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
The leading hemisphere of Enceladus displays a remarkably fresh-looking surface in this recent Cassini view. At this resolution, only a few craters can be made out in this wrinkled region of the geologically active moon's surface. A far more heavily cratered, and older, terrain region is visible to the northwest.
This view is centered on 15 degrees north latitude, 109 degrees west longitude. North on Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is up.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 30, 2007. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 108,000 kilometers (67,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 75 degrees. Image scale is 646 meters (2,119 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09770: A Fresh Face sur le site de la NASA.
Two icy moons meet on the sky in a "mutual event" recorded by the Cassini spacecraft.
The great brightness of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is rather obvious in comparison to Dione (1,126 kilometers, or 700 miles across) behind it. Enceladus is the most reflective object in the Solar System, and is nearly pure white. Dione, in comparison, reflects about 70 percent of the light falling upon it.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 24, 2007. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.9 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) from Enceladus and 2.2 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Dione. Image scale is 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Enceladus and 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel on Dione.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Saturn's massive atmosphere appears poised to crush little Enceladus in this image. Many fascinating details are visible in the gas planet's sinuous bands, such as a giant, eye-shaped storm that circles the south pole. The diameter of Enceladus is 499 kilometers, (310 miles).
The image was taken in visible blue light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Oct. 12, 2004, at a distance of about 5.3 million kilometers (3.3 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 68 degrees. The image scale is 31 kilometers (19 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
A fresh look at Saturn's moon Enceladus reveals tempting new details about the brightest real estate in the solar system. This false-color image shows that some of the linear features on Enceladus have a slightly different color from their surroundings. Different colors of ice may be caused by varying compositions or varying ice crystal sizes. Either of which can indicate different formation mechanisms or different ages. Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) across.
The new view shows some of the smooth plains noted in NASA's Voyager spacecraft images and earlier Cassini images. At about the seven o'clock position are interwoven linear patterns that are reminiscent of the wispy-terrain features on two of Saturn's other moons, Dione and Rhea.
Imaging scientists are not sure whether these brighter markings are evidence for contamination of the ice in the linear features by some other material. Analysis of high resolution images of Enceladus should also show whether, like the surprising terrain seen on Dione, the "wisps" are curvilinear fractures that are not quite resolved at this scale.
This false color view combines images obtained using filters sensitive to ultraviolet, polarized green and infrared light. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Feb. 16, 2005, at distances ranging from 179,727 to 179,601 kilometers (111,677 to 111,599 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 22 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Saturn's brilliant jewel, water-ice-covered Enceladus, is the most reflective body in the solar system.
Reflecting greater than 90 percent of the incidental sunlight, this moon was the source of much surprise during the Voyager era. Enceladus (pronounced "en-SELL-uh-duss"), exhibits both smooth and lightly cratered terrains that are crisscrossed here and there by linear, groove-like features. It also has characteristics similar to those of Jupiter's moons, Ganymede and Europa, making it one of Saturn's most enigmatic moons.
Cassini will investigate its rich geologic record in a series of four planned close flybys. The first flyby is scheduled for Feb. 17, 2005.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on July 3, 2004, from a distance of 1.6 million kilometers (990,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase angle of about 103 degrees. The image scale is 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel. Enceladus is roughly 499 kilometers (310 miles) across. The image has not been magnified.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Movie Clip
Click on the image
The most prominent jets of vapor and icy particles emerging from the south polar terrain of Saturn's moon Enceladus are shown here in graphical form in a movie clip of a "rotating" Enceladus.
A mosaic constructed of images of Enceladus' southern hemisphere (see PIA11126) from NASA's Cassini spacecraft imaging science sub-system was projected onto a computer model of the moon to which vectors indicating the direction of the jets were added.
About the Video
Reconstructing the Past on Enceladus
The video demonstrates two examples of the interpretation of tectonic spreading along the “tiger stripe” fractures in the south polar terrain of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The first part of the video shows a simple example in which an old relict tiger stripe is believed to have lost its tip after it was sheared off by tectonic forces and pushed away from its parent by spreading. In the meantime, the parent tiger stripe has managed to regenerate a replacement tip, probably by the creation of new icy crust from upwelling soft ice. The orphaned "clone" now sits by itself, connected to the parent only by two parallel fault lines. The movie shows that, if the orphaned tiger stripe tip can be slid along the parallel faults back into place on the parent rift, the fit is remarkably good. Striated material between the clone and the replacement tip represents new icy crust material that must have been created during the spreading process.
The second part of the video demonstrates how this video-reconstruction technique can be used to infer a possible spreading history of the region between two tiger stripes: Alexandria Sulcus and Cairo Sulcus. The process begins by snipping-out and closing the gap that corresponds to Alexandria Sulcus and its upraised flanks. The gap is closed by matching the remaining right and left edges like a jigsaw puzzle. The closure is accomplished by sliding along a prominent fault nearly perpendicular to one end of Alexandria. This segment of the video is repeated four times with arrows that mark previously offset features that come into alignment after Alexandria is closed.
Next, Cairo Sulcus is closed along a lower fault that is parallel to the one along which Alexandria was closed. After the Cairo is removed, the closure is continued along the same fault until all of the intervening terrain has been removed. During this process, a mysterious 14-kilometer-sized elliptical feature appears by matching a semi-circular feature that previously existed on the right side of Cairo with the left side of an oval-shaped feature that exists between Alexandria and Cairo. In this way, the gap between Cairo and Alexandria can be closed completely, but there remains a length of the fault that suggests even more spreading may have occurred. Closing the gap all the way along this fault results in the reappearance of a feature that resembles the elliptical structure seen earlier. This feature is perhaps a relict impact crater or the surface expression of a rising warm diapir or icy convection cell.
The video was created based on images of the south pole of Enceladus taken from this map, see PIA11126.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11136: Enceladus' Jets sur le site de la NASA.
Wispy fingers of bright, icy material reach tens of thousands of kilometers outward from Saturn's moon Enceladus into the E ring, while the moon's active south polar jets continue to fire away.
This astonishing, never-before-seen structure is made visible with the sun almost directly behind the Saturn system from Cassini's vantage point. The sun-Enceladus-spacecraft angle here is 175 degrees, a viewing geometry in which structures made of tiny particles brighten substantially.
These features are very likely the result of particles injected into Saturn orbit by the Enceladus geysers: Those injected in the direction of the moon's orbital motion end up on larger, slower orbits and trail Enceladus in its orbit, and those injected into the opposite direction end up smaller, faster orbits and lead Enceladus. (Orbital motion is counter-clockwise.) In addition, the configuration of wisps may hint at an interaction between Saturn's magnetosphere and the torrent of particles issuing from Enceladus.
In addition to the wisps, another unexpected detail is the dark gore in the center of the ring, following the moon in its orbit, likely brought about by the sweeping action of Enceladus as it orbits in the center of the E ring.
The view looks down onto Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) from about 15 degrees above the ringplane. Tethys (1,071 kilometers, or 665 miles across) is visible to the left of Enceladus.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Sept. 15, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 128 kilometers (80 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
The Cassini narrow angle camera took images of the ropy, taffy-like topography of Saturn's moon Enceladus from many different angles as the spacecraft flew by on Feb. 17, 2005. Images from different directions allow construction of stereo views such as this, which are helpful in interpreting the complex topography.
This view of an area about 60 kilometers (37 miles) across shows several different kinds of ridge-and-trough topography, indicative of a variety of horizontal forces near the surface of this 505-kilometer (314-mile) diameter satellite.
Several different kinds of deformation are visible, and a small population of impact craters shows that this is some of the younger terrain on Enceladus. Sunlight illuminates the scene from the bottom.
Interestingly, the topographic relief is only about one kilometer, which is quite low for a small, low-gravity satellite. However, this is consistent with other evidence that points to interior melting and resurfacing in Enceladus' history.
The images for this anaglyph were taken in visible light with the narrow angle camera, from distances ranging from 10,750 kilometers (6,680 miles, red image) to 24,861 kilometers (15,448 miles, blue image) from Enceladus, and at Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angles from 32 to 27 degrees. Pixel scale in the red image is 60 meters (197 feet) per pixel; scale in the blue image is 150 meters (492 feet) per pixel. The images have been contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.
A separate, non-stereo version of the scene, showing only the red image is also available (see PIA06190).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
A variety of surface ages is revealed in this 16-image mosaic taken during Cassini's first close flyby of Enceladus, on Feb. 17, 2005.
This mosaic shows the trailing hemisphere of Enceladus -- the side of Enceladus that always faces away from the direction of the satellite's orbital motion. This hemisphere is dominated by Sarandib Planitia (just right of center), a region thought to be dominated by smooth plains in NASA Voyager 2 images taken in August 1981, but shown here in much higher resolution images to be covered in low ridges and troughs. Other major features seen in the region include Labtayt Sulci, a 1-kilometer- (0.6-mile-) deep canyon running northward from a cusp in the south polar terrain boundary (Cashmere Sulci) at lower right to a set of 1-kilometer-tall ridges (Cufa Dorsa and Ebony Dorsum) east of Sarandib Planitia (also seen in PIA06191), as well as Samarkand Sulci, a band of ridges and troughs running along the western margin of Sarandib Planitia almost all the way north to Enceladus' north pole.
In contrast to the youthful terrain of Sarandib Planitia and the terrain south of it, the terrain north and west of Sarandib appears much older. These regions are covered with impact craters at various stages of degradation, either from viscous relaxation (which causes the craters to flatten over time), or from tectonic activity.
To create this single full-disk mosaic, the 16 images were reprojected into an orthographic projection centered at 2.3 degrees north latitude, 317.7 degrees west longitude with a pixel scale of 63 meters (207 feet) per pixel. The original images were taken by the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle and wide-angle cameras from distances ranging from 10,850 to 29,750 kilometers (6,740 to 18,490 miles). The images had a phase, or sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, angle of 28 degrees.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
These two side-by-side images compare a characteristic sea-floor spreading feature on Earth, known as a spreading ridge transform, to a very similar looking arrangement of "tiger stripe" rift segments in the south polar terrain region of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
The left image shows a shaded relief map of bathymetry (or sonar-like topography) data covering a fast-spreading ridge along the Earth's East Pacific Rise at 9.5 degrees north latitude, 104 degrees west longitude. Spreading ridges are laterally offset in a characteristic "zig-zag" pattern that closely matches the offset pattern seen on the Enceladus tiger stripe rifts. Striations parallel to the seafloor ridges are produced symmetrically when upwelling magma in the rifts solidify and become welded on each side of the central trench.
In contrast, the transform-like structure on Enceladus (in the image on the right) is flanked by a very complicated arrangement of old fractures. If the Enceladus feature is indeed a type of transform, it indicates spreading in a way that significantly differs from sea-floor spreading: Either the Enceladus feature is not spreading symmetrically from the center of the tiger stripe rifts as usually occurs in terrestrial sea-floor spreading centers, or else the original indicators of symmetrical spreading have been erased by a complicated superposed fracture history.
The Enceladus data were acquired by NASA's Cassini spacecraft's imaging science sub-system during four close-targeted flybys of Enceladus in March, August and October 2008.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Sea-floor bathymetry data ©2008 MGDS; www.marine-geo.org from Carbotte, S.M., R. Arko, D.N. Chayes, W. Haxby, K. Lehnert, S. O'Hara, W.B.F. Ryan, R.A. Weissel, T. Shipley, L. Gahagan, K. Johnson, T. Shank (2004), New Integrated Data Management System for Ridge2000 and MARGINS Research, Eos Trans. AGU, 85(51), 553, DOI: 10.1029/2004EO510002.]
Voir l'image PIA11138: Spreading Ridge Transforms On Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
Plumes of icy material extend above the southern polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus, as imaged by the Cassini spacecraft in January 2005. The monochrome view is presented along with a color-coded image on the right. The view in this image is perpendicular to the tiger stripe fractures that straddle the south pole. Another plume view, PIA07798, was taken one month later and looks along the tiger stripe fractures. See PIA06247 for a view of the tiger stripe features.
Images like these are being analyzed by scientists as they seek to explain the processes that could be producing such incredible features. As reported in the journal Science on March 10, 2006, imaging scientists believe that the plumes are geysers erupting from pressurized subsurface reservoirs of liquid water above 273 degrees Kelvin (0 degrees Celsius).
These images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 209,400 kilometers (130,100 miles) from Enceladus at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 148 degrees. The image scale is about 1.3 kilometer (0.8 mile) per pixel.
A slightly different version of this image product was released in Nov. 2005. See PIA07760.
The mosaic is an orthographic projection centered at 46.8 degrees south latitude, 188 degrees west longitude, and has an image scale of 67 meters (220 feet) per pixel. The original images ranged in resolution from 67 meters per pixel to 350 meters (1,150 feet) per pixel and were taken at distances ranging from 11,100 to 61,300 kilometers (6,900 to miles) from Enceladus.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA07801: Spray Above Enceladus II sur le site de la NASA.
This dramatic scene from Cassini illustrates an array of processes on Saturn's moon Enceladus, a once geologically active world. Most of the larger craters appear to have softened from their original, presumably crisp appearance, and are cross-cut here by numerous faults.
Cassini acquired this high-resolution view of Enceladus during its closest encounter yet with any moon of Saturn.
Toward the bottom of the scene, terrain containing fractured and softened craters gives way to essentially non-cratered terrain consisting of tectonic faults.
The softened craters, fractured plains and wrinkled terrain on Enceladus suggest geologic activity has taken place in several episodes during the satellite's history. This activity might continue into the present time, although imaging team scientists have seen no evidence for current activity on the moon.
Illumination of the scene is from the left. The image was obtained in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 14, 2005, at a distance of about 11,500 kilometers (7,150 miles) from Enceladus, and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 46 degrees. The image scale is 67 meters (220 feet) per pixel. The image's contrast has been enhanced to aid visibility of surface features.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
Numerous blue-green fractures can be seen in this false-color mosaic taken during Cassini's second close flyby of Enceladus, on March 9, 2005.
The mosaic shows the anti-Saturnian hemisphere of Enceladus -- the side that always faces away from Saturn. This region contains a number of tectonic and impact features and shows how these two geologic forces interact on Enceladus. The center left portion of this mosaic is dominated by Diyar Planitia. Like Sarandib Planitia observed in the previous Enceladus flyby, the region is characterized by low ridges and troughs. Throughout this hemisphere, fractures of all sizes disrupt the previously existing cratered terrain and even the comparatively youthful Diyar Planitia.
Many of the younger fractures have blue-green walls, revealing coarse-grained water ice in the top layers of Enceladus' lithosphere, compared to the fine-grained ice that coats much of Enceladus' surface. The blue-green color is very similar to the coatings surrounding the south polar "tiger stripes" (these appear greener than the features in the south polar mosaic released in 2005 (see PIA07800) due to the use of clear-filter images, instead of green, in that mosaic).
A higher resolution cropped section of this mosaic is available in PIA08355.
This mosaic consists of 25 false-color footprints (75 images total) taken by the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera. The mosaic uses an ultraviolet filter centered at 338 nanometers for blue, a green filter centered at 568 nanometers for green and a near-infrared filter centered at 930 nanometers for red -- thus covering a wider spectrum region than the human eye. To create a single, full-disk mosaic, the images were reprojected into an orthographic projection centered at 1.5 degrees south latitude, 204 degrees west longitude with a pixel scale of 90 meters (295 feet) per pixel. The black strip seen at the top of the mosaic is an unfilled seam between two images.
The original images were taken from distances ranging from 4,300 to 31,800 kilometers (2,670 to 19,760 miles). The images have a phase, or sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, angle of 45 degrees.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
The Cassini spacecraft looks down under at the tortured south polar region of Enceladus, crossed by its "tiger stripes," or sulci, as the long, nearly parallel fractures are officially known. The use of enhanced color in this and other composite images makes the fractures and faults easier for the eye to detect.
The moon's excess warmth, water ice jets, and huge vapor plume laced with simple organic materials make it an excellent candidate for the search for pre-biotic chemistry, and possibly even life, beyond Earth.
Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) across.
This false-color view is a composite of images obtained using filters sensitive to ultraviolet, green and infrared light. The images were taken by the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 16, 2007 at a distance of approximately 657,000 kilometers (408,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 4 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This map of the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus shows the correlation between jet sources identified in Cassini imaging data and hot spots on the surface located by the composite infrared spectrometer instrument.
To identify jet source locations on the surface, imaging scientists carefully measured the locations and orientations of individual jets observed along the moon's limb in Cassini images taken from multiple viewing angles (see PIA08386). For each jet measurement, the researchers then computed a curve, or ground track, on the surface of Enceladus along which that jet might lie. The ground tracks from all of the measurements made in the various images produced many intersections on this map. By considering the jet directions at every possible intersection, the researchers isolated eight clusters of ground track intersections as jet sources.
The eight identified jet source locations are labeled with yellow roman numerals. Composite infrared spectrometer hot spots are red boxes labeled with green capital letters. The line-of-sight intersections indicating the measurements of each source in individual images are shown as colored diamonds. White circles indicate the uncertainty in the locations of those sets of intersections.
The map is a polar stereographic projection of Cassini imaging data. The four tiger stripe fractures, or sulci, are labeled here. The south pole is dead center on the map. Key longitudes are also labeled around the perimeter of the map.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This global map of Saturn's moon Enceladus was created using images taken during Cassini spacecraft flybys, with Voyager images filling in the gaps in Cassini's coverage.
The map is an equidistant (simple cylindrical) projection and has a scale of 440 meters (1,444 feet) per pixel at the equator. The mean radius of Enceladus used for projection of this map is 252 kilometers (157 miles). This mosaic map is an update to the version released in December 2006 (see PIA08342). The mosaic was shifted by 3.5 degrees to the west, compared to the previous version, to be consistent with the International Astronomical Union longitude definition for Enceladus.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA08417: Map of Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
The active surface jets on Enceladus collectively form a brilliant, extended plume that is made visible as sunlight scatters among the microscopic particles of ice. The plume is more easily seen with the Sun directly, or almost directly, behind Enceladus, as is the case here.
The moon's surface is lit here by reflected light from Saturn. A faint spike of stray light from the sunlit crescent visible in PIA10498 appears just right of the moon. This image was taken as part of the same observation as PIA10498, but uses a much longer exposure, making both the plume and Saturn-lit surface easier to see.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 17, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 235,000 kilometers (146,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 140 degrees. Image scale is 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10502: Plumewatch sur le site de la NASA.
The complex history of Enceladus' surface is revealed in great detail in this mosaic of images taken during Cassini's closest encounter with this intriguing icy moon.
Fractures are nearly ubiquitous in this terrain, cutting across each other and across impact craters. Scientists can use the relationships between different features to determine the order in which they formed, thereby unraveling the moon's past. For example, almost all the craters in this mosaic have fractures running through their rims and floors, indicating that the craters formed first. This means that Enceladus has been geologically active relatively recently, especially compared to some of its neighbors in the Saturn system.
There is an impressive variety of fractures visible here--from the wide east-west rifts near the upper left of the mosaic to the very fine north-south fractures in the center (which are approximately 100 to 400 meters, or 330 to 1,300 feet, across). Due to the complexity of this terrain, the task of unraveling Enceladus' history promises to be a worthy challenge for planetary scientists.
The images in this mosaic were taken on March 9, 2005, in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at distances ranging from approximately 13,000 to 5,200 kilometers (8,000 to 3,200 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle ranging from 44 to 38 degrees. Resolution in the original images ranges from about 80 to 30 meters (260 to 100 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Ring shadows line the face of distant Saturn, providing an exquisite backdrop for the brilliant, white sphere of Enceladus. This icy moon, with its heavily modified surface and towering plume of icy material, is a target of intense study for Cassini during its Equinox mission.
This image was taken simultaneously with PIA10481 and looks toward the leading side of Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across). North is up.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 28, 2007. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 291,000 kilometers (181,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 15 degrees. Image scale is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10485: Focus on Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
During its very close flyby on March 9, 2005, the Cassini spacecraft captured this false-color view of Saturn's moon Enceladus, which shows the wide variety of this icy moon's geology.
Some geological regions on Enceladus are old and retain large numbers of impact craters; younger areas exhibit many generations of tectonic troughs and ridges. Subtle differences in color may indicate different ice properties, such as grain sizes, that will help unravel the sequence of geologic events leading to the current strange landscape.
This false-color view is a composite of individual frames obtained using filters sensitive to green (centered at 568 nanometers) and infrared light (two infrared filters, centered at 752 and 930 nanometers respectively). The view has been processed to accentuate subtle color differences. The atmosphere of Saturn forms the background of this scene (its color has been rendered grey to allow the moon to stand out).
The Sun illuminates Enceladus from the left, leaving part of it in shadow and blocking out part of the view of Saturn. This view shows the anti-Saturn hemisphere, centered nearly on the equator.
The images comprising this view were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 94,000 kilometers (58,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 48 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 560 meters (1,800 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Recent Cassini images of Saturn's moon Enceladus backlit by the sun show the fountain-like sources of the fine spray of material that towers over the south polar region. This image was taken looking more or less broadside at the "tiger stripe" fractures observed in earlier Enceladus images. It shows discrete plumes of a variety of apparent sizes above the limb (edge) of the moon. This image was acquired on Nov. 27, 2005.
Imaging scientists, as reported in the journal Science on March 10, 2006, believe that the jets are geysers erupting from pressurized subsurface reservoirs of liquid water above 273 degrees Kelvin (0 degrees Celsius).
This caption was updated on March 9, 2006.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.In the dim light of the outer solar system, Cassini gazed back at Saturn's brightest gem - the moon Enceladus. The icy little world presents only a slim crescent in this natural color view.
Cassini has now matched the best spatial resolution on Enceladus achieved by NASA's Voyager spacecraft, and will soon have excellent coverage of the moon (at more than 10 times the resolution in this image), following a flyby planned for February 17.
When seen from its day side, Enceladus (499 kilometers, or 310 miles across) has one of the brightest and whitest surfaces in the solar system. Since it reflects most of the sunlight that strikes it, the temperature there remains at a chilly -200 degrees Celsius (-330 degrees Fahrenheit).
In this view, Cassini was pointed at the leading hemisphere of Enceladus, which was in darkness at the time. The image has been rotated so that north on Enceladus is up.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Jan. 16, 2005, at a distance of approximately 209,300 kilometers (130,100 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 148 degrees. Resolution in the original image was about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced and magnified by a factor of two to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Saturn's moon Enceladus is only 505 kilometers (314 miles) across, small enough to fit within the length of the United Kingdom, as illustrated here. The intriguing icy moon also could fit comfortably within the states of Arizona or Colorado.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
This sweeping mosaic of Saturn's moon Enceladus provides broad regional context for the ultra-sharp, close-up views NASA's Cassini spacecraft acquired minutes earlier, during its flyby on Aug. 11, 2008. See PIA11114 and PIA11113 for the higher resolution views.
This false-color mosaic combines Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) narrow-angle camera images obtained through ultraviolet, green, and near-infrared camera filters. Areas that are greenish in appearance are believed to represent deposits of coarser grained ice and solid boulders that are too small to be seen at this scale, but which are visible in the higher resolution views, while whitish deposits represent finer grained ice. The mosaic shows that coarse-grained and solid ice are concentrated along valley floors and walls, as well as along the upraised flanks of the "tiger stripe" fractures, which may be covered with plume fallout that landed not far from the sources. Elsewhere on Enceladus, this coarse water ice is concentrated within outcrops along cliff faces and at the top of ridges. The sinuous boundary of scarps and ridges that encircles the south polar terrain at about 55 degrees south latitude is conspicuous. Much of the coarse-grained or solid ice along this boundary may be blocky rubble that has crumbled off of cliff faces as a result of ongoing seismic activity. This mosaic complements the imaging coverage acquired during Cassini's July 2005 flyby of Enceladus by showing portions of the moon's south polar region and tiger stripes, or sulci, that were in darkness during that flyby (PIA06247).
The reversed lighting conditions over the polar region (compared to the July 2005 images) highlight features, such as fractures and ridges, that are barely visible in the July 2005 views, and vice versa. The four most prominent sulci (from top to bottom: Damascus, Baghdad, Alexandria and Cairo) appear as generally horizontal fractures near lower right, and they extend into the moon's night side. The mosaic is an orthographic projection centered at 63.0 degrees south latitude, 281.3 degrees west longitude, and has an image scale of 60 meters (196 feet) per pixel. The original images ranged in resolution from 28 to 154 meters (92 to 505 feet) per pixel and were taken at distances ranging from 5,064 to 25,949 kilometers (3,140 to 15,468 miles) from Enceladus.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11112: Great Southern Land sur le site de la NASA.
Craters on Enceladus tend to be modified by a couple of different processes that are visible in this view.
Most crater rims on this icy surface appear to have softened, or "relaxed," shapes compared to the initial, sharp edges they likely possessed when first formed by impacts. Additionally, systems of tectonic folds and fractures cut through craters, like those at top center, repaving the more ancient, cratered surface.
One of the largest of these systems is Samarkand Sulci, which stretches from lower right toward upper left in this view.
The view looks toward terrain near the north pole of Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) from 48 degrees above the moon's equator. Lit terrain seen here is on the moon's Saturn-facing side. North is up and rotated 16 degrees to the left.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 30, 2008 using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of polarized green light centered at 617 and 568 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 161,000 kilometers (100,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 85 degrees. Image scale is 962 meters (0.6 mile) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10445: Reshaping the Craters sur le site de la NASA.
During its very close flyby of Enceladus on March 9, 2005, Cassini took high resolution images of the icy moon that are helping scientists interpret the complex topography of this intriguing little world.
This scene is an icy landscape that has been scored by tectonic forces. Many of the craters in this terrain have been heavily modified, such as the 10-kilometer-wide (6-mile-wide) crater near the upper right that has prominent north-south fracturing along its northeastern slope.
The image has been rotated so that north on Enceladus is up.
The image was taken in visible light with the narrow angle camera from a distance of about 11,900 kilometers (7,400 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 44 degrees. Pixel scale in the image is 70 meters (230 feet) per pixel.
A stereo version of the scene is also available (see PIA06216). The image has been contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The magnetometer team is based at Imperial College in London, working with team members from the United States and Germany.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The magnetometer team homepage is http://www.imperial.ac.uk/research/spat/research/cassini/.
During its closest flyby of Saturn's wrinkled, icy moon Enceladus, Cassini obtained multi-spectral images of its cratered terrain that have been put together to create this false-color view.
To human eyes, Enceladus appears almost completely white, but false color reveals intriguing details. This view is a composite of images taken using filters sensitive to ultraviolet (centered at 338 nanometers), green (centered at 568 nanometers), and near-infrared (centered at 930 nanometers) light, and has been processed to accentuate subtle color differences. The uppermost surface of these terrains appears uniformly grey in this picture, suggesting that they are covered with materials of homogeneous composition and grain size. However, the walls of many of the fractures appear to be somewhat bluer than typical surface materials. It is possible that the difference in color identifies outcrops of solid ice on the walls of fractures, or ice with different grain-sizes, compared to powdery surface materials. It is also possible that the color identifies some compositional difference between buried ice and ice at the surface.
The surface is peppered with craters of all sizes, from the 21-kilometer (13-mile) diameter crater at the top of the image, down to tiny craters near the limit of resolution. The prominent crater at the top contains a central, domelike structure more than 11 kilometers (7 miles) in diameter. The dome, the crater--and indeed the entire scene--is sliced by a complex network of fractures ranging in width from hundreds of meters in some places, to over three kilometers (2 miles) in others.
The prominent, complex fracture in the bottom of the frame extends over 85 kilometers (53 miles) in length across the field of view. From Cassini's oblique vantage point, the walls of the large fracture are clearly visible. A pervasive network of narrow, parallel grooves can be seen in many places in the image, and they appear to slice the surface into parallel slabs of ice approximately 500 meters (1,600 feet) in thickness.
The image has been rotated so that north is at the top of the scene. The terrain in this scene is located on the side of Enceladus that faces away from Saturn, centered on latitude 28.7 north, longitude 192.5 west.
The image was taken during Cassini's closest-ever approach to Enceladus on March 9, 2005. It was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 21,300 kilometers (13,200 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 45 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 130 meters (430 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Cassini's closest look yet at bright, icy Enceladus was captured in this view, centered on the moon's trailing hemisphere. It shows some of the linear features in the terrain of the Diyar Planitia region. Enceladus is 499 kilometers (310 miles) across.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Dec. 14, 2004, at a distance of 672,000 kilometers (417,600 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun- Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 32 degrees. The image scale is about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two and contrast enhanced to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For images visit the Cassini imaging team home page http://ciclops.org.
The Cassini spacecraft acquired this view 15 hours before closest approach to Enceladus as the spacecraft dove toward its thrilling March 2008 encounter with the ice-particle-spewing moon. The cratered terrain of the north is seen at top, and is even dimly visible on the moon's night side, which is lit by reflected sunlight coming from Saturn.
North on Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is up and rotated 22 degrees to the left. The north pole is tilted slightly toward Cassini.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 12, 2008. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 612,000 kilometers (380,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 114 degrees. Image scale is 4 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA09882: On Approach to Enceladus sur le site de la NASA.
Sunlight makes visible the faint band called the E ring as two moons meet in the sky.
Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) and Tethys (1,071 kilometers, or 665 miles across) appear close together in the sky in this image, but in reality, Tethys was more than 260,000 kilometers (162,000 miles) farther from the Cassini spacecraft -- greater than half the distance from Earth to the Moon. Enceladus is easy to identify by the brilliant plume of ice erupting from its south pole.
Although this perspective views the night sides of both moons, the Sun is not the only source of illumination in the Saturn system. Tethys is at a fuller phase with respect to Saturn, and thus its "night side" is more fully lit than that of Enceladus.
The view was acquired from a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 163 degrees, a viewing geometry in which the microscopic ice particles in its plume brighten substantially.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 6, 2006 at a distance of approximately 3.9 million kilometers (2.4 million miles) from Enceladus and 4.2 million kilometers (2.6 million miles) from Tethys. Image scale is 23 kilometers (14 miles) per pixel on Enceladus and 25 kilometers (16 miles) on Tethys.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
This global digital map of Saturn's moon Enceladus was created using data taken by the Cassini spacecraft, with gaps in coverage filled in by NASA Voyager spacecraft data. The map is an equidistant projection and has a scale of 300 meters (980 feet) per pixel. Equidistant projections preserve distances on a body, with some distortion of area and direction.
The mean radius of Enceladus used for projection of this map is 252 kilometers (157 miles).
This map is an update to the version released in December 2005. See PIA07777.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Wrinkles and cracks have reworked the surface of Enceladus, perhaps due to the influence of tidal stresses. The monochrome view also makes it clear that certain geological provinces on the moon have been altered by the activity, erasing ancient craters, while other places have retained much of the cratering record.
See PIA07708 for a false-color version of this view.
Terrain on the trailing hemisphere of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is seen here. North is up.
The image was taken using a near infrared spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was obtained using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 17, 2006 at a distance of approximately 153,000 kilometers (95,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase angle, of 29 degrees. Image scale is 912 meters (2,994 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Numerous stars provide a serene background in this view of Enceladus captured by the Cassini spacecraft while the moon was in eclipse, within Saturn's shadow
The view looks up at Enceladus' south pole.
Although they are not visible at this viewing angle, the icy moon's famed jets are aimed toward the spacecraft as it acquired this image.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Oct. 9, 2008 at a distance of approximately 83,000 kilometers (52,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 73 degrees. Image scale is 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA10526: Starry Night sur le site de la NASA.
Click on image for larger annotated version
This Cassini image was the ninth 'skeet shoot' narrow-angle image captured during the Oct. 31, 2008 flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
The source region for jet VII (see PIA08385) has been identified. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 31, 2008, at a distance of approximately 6,151 kilometers (3,844 miles) from Enceladus and at a sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 75 degrees. Image scale is 35 meters per pixel (115 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11127: Enceladus Rev 91 Flyby - Skeet Shoot #9 sur le site de la NASA.
The tortured southern polar terrain of Saturn's moon Enceladus appears strewn with great boulders of ice in these two fantastic views -- the highest resolution images obtained so far by Cassini of any world.
This comparison view consists of a wide-angle camera image (left) for context, and a high-resolution narrow-angle camera image (right). The two images were acquired at an altitude of approximately 208 kilometers (129 miles), as Cassini made its closest approach yet to Enceladus.
The wide-angle view shows what appears to be a geologically youthful, tectonically fractured terrain.
In the narrow-angle view, some smearing of the image due to spacecraft motion is apparent. Both of these views were acquired as Enceladus raced past Cassini's field of view near the time of closest approach. At the time, the imaging cameras were pointed close to the moon's limb (edge), rather than directly below the spacecraft. This allowed for less 'motion blur' than would have been apparent had the cameras pointed straight down. Thus, the terrain imaged here was actually at a distance of 319 kilometers (198 miles) from Cassini.
At the fine scale afforded by the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle view, the surface is dominated by ice blocks between 10 and 100 meters (33 and 330 feet) across. The origin of these icy boulders is enigmatic. Scientists are interested in studying the sizes and numbers of the blocks in this bizarre scene, and in understanding whether terrain covered with boulders is common on Enceladus.
The images in this comparison view are available individually (see PIA06251 and PIA06252).
Image scale is about 4 meters (13 feet) per pixel in the narrow-angle image and about 37 meters (121 feet) per pixel in the wide-angle image. The wide-angle image has been magnified by a factor of two. The contrast in both images has been enhanced to improve the visibility of surface features.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org.
This image was taken during Cassini's extremely close encounter with Enceladus on Oct. 9, 2008.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 9, 2008, a distance of approximately 26,000 kilometers (16,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 312 meters (1,024 feet) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
Voir l'image PIA11120: Enceladus Oct. 9, 2008 Flyby - Posted Image #2 sur le site de la NASA.
Figure 1: Originally Released Image
This spectacular view is a mosaic of four high resolution images taken by the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Feb. 16, 2005, during its close flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
The view is about 300 kilometers (200 miles) across and shows the myriad of faults, fractures, folds, troughs and craters that make this Saturnian satellite especially intriguing to planetary scientists. More than 20 years ago, NASA's Voyager spacecraft gave hints of a surface cut by tectonic features, and subsequent images of other icy moons have revealed many different ways that stresses have acted on icy moon crusts.
The new close-up images of Enceladus, which has a diameter of 505 kilometers (314 miles), show some familiar-looking features and others that are brand new. The work required to unravel their origins, their formation sequence, and the implications for the evolution of icy solar system bodies is just beginning.
Voyager images of Enceladus, which were obtained at much poorer spatial resolution, showed terrains like those seen here. They were called "smooth plains" because they appeared to exhibit little topographic relief. However, Cassini has now viewed these terrains at almost 10 times better resolution. The new images reveal very complex systems of fractures, resurfaced terrain, and in some cases, topographic relief greater than several hundred meters.
Many styles of fracturing are evident in this mosaic. Extending downward from the top center of the mosaic for hundreds of kilometers is a broad belt of complex, interwoven fractures. A huge rift 5 kilometers (3 miles)-wide dissects this belt and extends into several older-looking, distinct regions or "cells" of terrain that themselves exhibit distinct fracture patterns.
Because Cassini flew rapidly past Enceladus, the right-side images were taken from a slightly different perspective than the left, and are delineated by the white box.
The mosaic covers longitudes from about 254 west to 296 west and latitudes from 60 south to the equator.
The images were taken in visible light on Feb. 17, 2005, at distances ranging from of 26,140 to 17,434 kilometers (16,243 to 10,833 miles) from Enceladus and at Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angles ranging from 27 to 29 degrees. Pixel scale in the left-side image is 150 meters (492 feet) per pixel; in the right-side (white box) image, scale is 105 meters (344 feet) per pixel. The image has been contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
