During its very close flyby of Enceladus on March 9, 2005, Cassini took
high resolution images of the icy moon that are helping scientists
interpret the complex topography of this intriguing little world.
This scene is an icy landscape that has been scored by tectonic forces.
Many of the craters in this terrain have been heavily modified, such as
the 10-kilometer-wide (6-mile-wide) crater near the upper right that has
prominent north-south fracturing along its northeastern slope.
The image has been rotated so that north on Enceladus is up.
The image was taken in visible light with the narrow angle camera from a
distance of about 11,900 kilometers (7,400 miles) from Enceladus and at a
Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 44 degrees. Pixel scale in
the image is 70 meters (230 feet) per pixel.
A stereo version of the scene is also available (see PIA06216). The image has been
contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.
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/.
