The real jewels of Saturn are arguably its stunning collection of icy
moons. Seen here with the unlit side of the rings are Titan (5,150
kilometers, or 3,200 miles across at right), Tethys (1,071 kilometers, or
665 miles across at left) and Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles
across at center) with its fountain-like geysers.
The faint, vertical banding in the image is due to "noise" in the
spacecraft electronics. This noise is difficult to remove from an image
that has a very wide dynamic range -- i.e., a wide range of brightness
levels -- as in the difference between gleaming Titan and the faint plumes
of Enceladus.
Additionally, a reflection of Titan's light within the camera optics is
likely responsible for the faint secondary image of Titan's limb to the
left of the giant moon.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on June 10, 2006 at a distance of approximately 3.9
million kilometers (2.4 million miles) from Enceladus, 5.3 million
kilometers (3.3 million miles) from Titan and 4.4 million kilometers (2.7
million miles) from Tethys. The Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle
is 160 degrees on Enceladus. Image scale is 23 kilometers (14 miles) per
pixel on Enceladus, 32 kilometers (20 miles) per pixel on Titan and 26
kilometers (16 miles) per pixel on Tethys.
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.