This stereo anaglyph of Saturn's moon Enceladus shows an area that has
undergone a very intriguing -- and in places puzzling -- sequence of
events. The craters here are subdued, as seen elsewhere on Enceladus,
and most, but not all, are older than the fractures. Fracturing has
occurred at a wide variety of scales, from the wide rift running through
the center of the image to much narrower sets of shorter fractures that
crosscut the craters (and each other) to the left.
The anaglyph has been rotated so that north on Enceladus is up.
This region is a transition from cratered to wrinkled terrain. Westward
(left) of the central rift that divides the two regions are relatively
parallel grooves and ridges that are reminiscent of terrain on Jupiter's
large moon Ganymede. Very few craters are seen in this area of Enceladus.
Eastward (right) of the large rift the terrain becomes more cratered,
although the craters are quite degraded (meaning soft and shallow in
appearance).
A prominent fracture runs north-south to the center of the image, then
turns sharply to the southwest, cutting across cratered terrain, the
large rift, and the grooved terrain. This behavior signifies that it is
one of the youngest features in this image.
The images for this anaglyph were taken in visible light with Cassini's
narrow-angle camera, at distances from Enceladus ranging from about 25,700
kilometers (16,000 miles, red-colored image) to 14,000 kilometers (8,800
miles, blue-colored image) and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase,
angle ranging from 46 to 44 degrees. Pixel scale in the red image was 150
meters (490 feet) per pixel. Scale in the blue image was 85 meters (280
feet) per pixel.
A separate, non-stereo version of the scene, showing only the red image,
is also available (see PIA06215). The images have been
contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.
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 was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The
magnetometer team is based at Imperial College in London, working with
team members from the United States and Germany.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The magnetometer team homepage is
http://www.imperial.ac.uk/research/spat/research/cassini/.
