Sunrise uncovers both old and new Enceladus in this image from the Cassini
spacecraft.
The lit side of the moon faces Saturn toward the left in this view of the
trailing hemisphere. Old craters still pockmark the northern hemisphere
while more recent geologic activity has swept them away in the south.
North is up in this image.
Mountain ranges, or dorsae, undulate across the moon's surface near the
equator, in the lower left of the image.
From this high northern viewing angle, the south pole's fascinating "tiger
stripe" area lies just out of view. Sulci, or furrows, in that area are
the sources of icy plumes being studied by Cassini scientists. (See
PIA07800 and PIA09761).
Also near the tiger stripes are rift segments that resemble the zigzag
patterns seen on Earth of sea-floor spreading from upwelling magma. See
PIA11138 for a comparison of the phenomena.
Like outstretched fingers, the Samarkand Sulci reach from the west toward
the north pole, clearing their path of craters and slicing some in half.
This false-color mosaic combines narrow-angle camera images obtained
through ultraviolet, green, and near-infrared camera filters. The images
were acquired on Dec. 2, 2008 at a distance of approximately 124,000
kilometers (77,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft,
or phase, angle of 116 degrees. Image scale is 742 meters (2,430 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 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.