PDS logoPlanetary Data System
PDS Information
Find a Node - Use these links to navigate to any of the 8 publicly accessible PDS Nodes.

This bar indicates that you are within the PDS enterprise which includes 6 science discipline nodes and 2 support nodes which are overseen by the Project Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Each node is led by an expert in the subject discipline, supported by an advisory group of other practitioners of that discipline, and subject to selection and approval under a regular NASA Research Announcement.
Click here to return to the Photojournal Home Page Click here to view a list of Photojournal Image Galleries Photojournal_inner_header
Latest Images  |  Spacecraft & Technology  |  Animations  |  Space Images App  |  Feedback  |  Photojournal Search  

PIA11601: Smooth and Rough Enceladus
NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks down at craters near the north pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Cratered surfaces on solar system moons indicate older terrains, while smooth surfaces are generally younger.
 Target Name:  Enceladus
 Is a satellite of:  Saturn
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens 
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  ISS - Narrow Angle 
 Product Size:  369 x 362 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Cassini Imaging Team 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA11601.tif (133.9 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA11601.jpg (4.222 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

The Cassini spacecraft looks down at craters near the north pole of Enceladus.

Cratered surfaces on solar system moons indicate older terrains, while smooth surfaces are generally younger, and therefore indicative of processes which eliminated the craters. See PIA08353 to learn more about the true nature of these surfaces and the processes at work on this geologically active moon.

The moon's north pole lies on the terminator to the right of the craters seen in this image. Lit terrain seen here is on the anti-Saturn side and trailing hemisphere of Enceladus (504 kilometers, 313 miles across).

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 11, 2009. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 472,000 kilometers (293,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 57 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/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Image Addition Date:
2009-10-14