PIA18071: Ocean Inside Saturn's Moon Enceladus
 Target Name:  Enceladus
 Is a satellite of:  Saturn
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens
Deep Space Network (DSN)
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  Imaging Science Subsystem 
 Product Size:  4992 x 5001 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  JPL
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA18071.tif (74.94 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA18071.jpg (1.501 MB)

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:

This diagram illustrates the possible interior of Saturn's moon Enceladus based on a gravity investigation by NASA's Cassini spacecraft and NASA's Deep Space Network, reported in April 2014. The gravity measurements suggest an ice outer shell and a low density, rocky core with a regional water ocean sandwiched in between at high southern latitudes.

Views from Cassini's imaging science subsystem were used to depict the surface geology of Enceladus and the plume of water jets gushing from fractures near the moon's south pole.

Enceladus is 313 miles (504 kilometers) in diameter.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image Addition Date:
2014-04-03