Wrinkles and cracks have reworked the surface of Enceladus, perhaps due to
the influence of tidal stresses. The monochrome view also makes it clear
that certain geological provinces on the moon have been altered by the
activity, erasing ancient craters, while other places have retained much
of the cratering record.
See PIA07708 for a false-color version of this view.
Terrain on the trailing hemisphere of Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314
miles across) is seen here. North is up.
The image was taken using a near infrared spectral filter sensitive to
wavelengths of light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was obtained
using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 17, 2006 at a
distance of approximately 153,000 kilometers (95,000 miles) from Enceladus
and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase angle, of 29 degrees. Image
scale is 912 meters (2,994 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 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.