The wrinkled border of Enceladus' south polar region snakes across this
view, separating fresher, younger terrain from more ancient, cratered
provinces.
This is the region of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) that
is known to be presently geologically active. At right are clearly visible
ridges and troughs thought to be caused by compressional stresses across
the icy surface.
The image was taken in polarized green light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on Sept. 9, 2006 at a distance of approximately 66,000
kilometers (41,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a
Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 104 degrees. Image scale is
396 meters (1,300 feet) 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/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.