Cassini's closest look yet at bright, icy Enceladus was captured in this
view, centered on the moon's trailing hemisphere. It shows some of the
linear features in the terrain of the Diyar Planitia region. Enceladus
is 499 kilometers (310 miles) across.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow
angle camera on Dec. 14, 2004, at a distance of 672,000 kilometers
(417,600 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun- Enceladus-spacecraft, or
phase, angle of 32 degrees. The image scale is about 4 kilometers (2.5
miles) per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two and
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 and its two onboard cameras were
designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at
the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For images visit the Cassini imaging team home page
http://ciclops.org.