Ring shadows line the face of distant Saturn, providing an exquisite
backdrop for the brilliant, white sphere of Enceladus. This icy moon, with
its heavily modified surface and towering plume of icy material, is a
target of intense study for Cassini during its Equinox mission.
This image was taken simultaneously with PIA10481 and looks toward
the leading side of Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across). North
is up.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on June 28, 2007. The view was acquired at a distance
of approximately 291,000 kilometers (181,000 miles) from Enceladus and at
a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 15 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.