This map of the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus illustrates the regions
that will be imaged by Cassini during the spacecraft's first very close
flyby of the moon on Feb. 17, 2005. At closest approach, the spacecraft
is expected to pass approximately 1,180 kilometers (733 miles) above the
moon's surface. Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) across.
The colored lines delineate the regions that will be imaged at differing
resolutions.
The coverage at spatial resolution better than 200 meters (656 feet) per
pixel primarily targets an area previously seen in NASA's Voyager
spacecraft images, but at lower resolution (around 1 kilometer or 0.6
miles per pixel). This high resolution coverage also includes areas in
the southern latitudes that were not seen at all by Voyager. The primary
purpose of this coverage is to provide detailed information about the
nature of different terrain types, especially the smooth plains materials,
cratered terrains and system of curvilinear fractures that appear to be
tectonic in nature.
The highest-resolution coverage (i.e. better than 70 meters, or 230 feet
per pixel) focuses on the detailed structure of prominent fractures in
the smooth plains.
Coverage outlined in purple (i.e., resolution better than 1.5 kilometers
or 0.9 miles per pixel) includes an area of Enceladus that was seen by
Voyager only at very poor spatial resolution (about 6 kilometers or 3.7
miles per pixel). Cassini's resolution will be approximately four times
better in this region.
The map was made from images obtained by both the Cassini and Voyager
spacecraft. The Cassini images used here were acquired on Jan. 15 and 16,
2005.
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 and the Cassini imaging team home page,
http://ciclops.org.
