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.
