Multiple jets of icy particles are blasted into space by the active
venting on Saturn's moon Enceladus.
This image was acquired in a viewing geometry that makes the tiny
particles in the Enceladus plume easy to see.
This view was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on Jan. 18, 2006, at a distance of approximately
930,000 kilometers (578,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a
sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 154 degrees. Image scale is
6 kilometers (3 miles) 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.