The Cassini spacecraft observes the wrinkled surface of Enceladus. The
geologically active south polar region is visible at bottom.
This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Enceladus (504
kilometers, or 313 miles across). Lit terrain is on the moon's leading
hemisphere. North is up and rotated 16 degrees to the right.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on June 2, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance
of approximately 285,000 kilometers (177,000 miles) from Enceladus and at
a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 108 degrees. Image scale is
2 kilometers (1 mile) 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.
