Cassini imaging scientists used views like this one to help them identify
the source locations for individual jets spurting ice particles, water
vapor and trace organic compounds from the surface of Saturn's moon
Enceladus.
Their study -- published in the Oct. 11, 2007, issue of the journal
Nature -- identifies eight source locations, all on the prominent
tiger stripe fractures, or sulci, in the moon's south polar region. Some
of the sources occur in regions not yet observed by Cassini's composite
infrared spectrometer, and the researchers predict that future Cassini
observations of those locations will find elevated temperatures.
This false-color view was created by combining three clear filter images
taken at nearly the same time as PIA07759. This image product was then
specially processed to enhance the individual jets that compose the plume.
(PIA07759 was instead processed to reveal subtleties in the brightness of
the overall plume that comprises the jets.) Some artifacts due to the
processing are present in the image. The final product was colored as blue
for dramatic effect.
The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera
on Nov. 27, 2005 at a distance of approximately 148,000 kilometers (92,000
miles) from Enceladus and at a sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle
of 161 degrees. Scale in the original images is about 880 meters (0.5
mile) per pixel. This view has been magnified by a factor of two from the
original images.
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.
