This artist concept shows the detection of an atmosphere on Saturn's icy
moon Enceladus. The Cassini magnetometer instrument is designed to measure
the magnitude and direction of the magnetic fields of Saturn and its
moons. During Cassini's two close flybys of Enceladus--Feb. 17 and
March 9--the instrument detected a bending of the magnetic field around
Enceladus.
The graphic shows the magnetic field observed by Cassini along its
trajectory plotted in a vector form. Even though the spacecraft altitude
was almost 500 kilometers (310 miles) at closest approach and the flyby
was upstream of the moon (where the interaction is expected to be weaker)
Cassini's magnetometer observed bending of the magnetic field consistent
with its draping around a conducting object, which indicates that the
Saturnian plasma is being diverted away from an extended atmosphere.
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 was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The
magnetometer team is based at Imperial College in London, working with
team members from the United States and Germany.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The magnetometer team homepage is
http://www.imperial.ac.uk/research/spat/research/cassini/.
