The complex history of Enceladus' surface is revealed in great detail in
this mosaic of images taken during Cassini's closest encounter with this
intriguing icy moon.
Fractures are nearly ubiquitous in this terrain, cutting across each
other and across impact craters. Scientists can use the relationships
between different features to determine the order in which they formed,
thereby unraveling the moon's past. For example, almost all the craters
in this mosaic have fractures running through their rims and floors,
indicating that the craters formed first. This means that Enceladus has
been geologically active relatively recently, especially compared to some
of its neighbors in the Saturn system.
There is an impressive variety of fractures visible here--from the wide
east-west rifts near the upper left of the mosaic to the very fine
north-south fractures in the center (which are approximately 100 to 400
meters, or 330 to 1,300 feet, across). Due to the complexity of this
terrain, the task of unraveling Enceladus' history promises to be a worthy
challenge for planetary scientists.
The images in this mosaic were taken on March 9, 2005, in visible green
light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at distances ranging
from approximately 13,000 to 5,200 kilometers (8,000 to 3,200 miles) from
Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle ranging from
44 to 38 degrees. Resolution in the original images ranges from about 80
to 30 meters (260 to 100 feet) 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 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.