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.
