Image:EN011 Colour mosaic.jpg

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Summary

Large mosaic of images taken by the Cassini Spacecraft of Saturn's moon Enceladus

Original caption:

A masterpiece of deep time and wrenching gravity, the tortured surface of Enceladus and its fascinating ongoing geologic activity tell the story of the ancient and present struggles of one tiny world. This is a story that is recounted by imaging scientists in a paper published in the journal Science on March 10, 2006.

The enhanced colour view of Enceladus seen here is largely of the southern hemisphere and includes the south polar terrain at the bottom of the image.

Ancient craters remain somewhat pristine in some locales, but have clearly relaxed in others. Northward-trending fractures, likely caused by a change in the moon’s rate of rotation and consequent flattening of the moon’s shape, rip across the southern hemisphere. The south polar terrain is marked by a striking set of `blue' fractures and encircled by a conspicuous and continuous chain of folds and ridges, testament to the forces within Enceladus that have yet to be silenced.

The mosaic was created from 21 false-colour frames taken during a close approach to Enceladus on July 14, 2005. Images taken using filters sensitive to ultraviolet, visible and infrared light (spanning wavelengths from 338 to 930 nanometers) were combined to create the individual frames.

The original images in the false-colour mosaic range in resolution from 350 to 67 meters (1,148 to 220 feet) per pixel and were taken from distances ranging from 61,300 to 11,100 kilometers (38,090 to 6,897 miles) from Enceladus.

Original Press Release

As it swooped past the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus on July 14, 2005, Cassini acquired high resolution views of this puzzling ice world. From afar, Enceladus exhibits a bizarre mixture of softened craters and complex, fractured terrains.

This large mosaic of 21 narrow-angle camera images have been arranged to provide a full-disk view of the anti-Saturn hemisphere on Enceladus. This mosaic is a false-color view that includes images taken at wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the infrared portion of the spectrum, and is similar to another, lower resolution false-color view obtained during the flyby (see Enceladus in False Color). In false-color, many long fractures on Enceladus exhibit a pronounced difference in colour (represented here in blue) from the surrounding terrain.

A leading explanation for the difference in colour is that the walls of the fractures expose outcrops of coarse-grained ice that are free of the powdery surface materials that mantle flat-lying surfaces.

The original images in the false-colour mosaic range in resolution from 350 to 67 meters (1,148 to 220 feet) per pixel and were taken at distances ranging from 61,300 to 11,100 kilometers (38,090 to 6,897 miles) from Enceladus. The mosaic is also part of a movie sequence of images from this flyby (see Zooming in on Enceladus).

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 centre is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at .

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  • (del) (cur) 00:15, 14 July 2006 . . WilliamKF ( Talk | contribs) . . 3237×3812 (1,273,012 bytes) (Full resolution version.)
  • (del) (rev) 20:46, 30 May 2006 . . Volcanopele ( Talk | contribs) . . 3237×3812 (2,677,786 bytes) (Large mosaic of images taken by the Cassini Spacecraft of Saturn's moon Enceladus Original caption: A masterpiece of deep time and wrenching gravity, the tortured surface of Enceladus and its fascinating )

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