Enceladus In The Distance

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 04, 2004
Cassini spied the moon Enceladus in the distance beyond Saturn's south pole in this image from Sept. 19, 2004. This view was taken in wavelengths of ultraviolet light where gas molecules in Saturn's high atmosphere scatter a great deal of sunlight.

Since Enceladus (499 kilometers, or 310 miles, across) has an unusually high reflectivity, its surface reflects even more of the light falling on it than Saturn does, making the moon appear very bright compared the planet.

Enceladus was dimmed in brightness by a factor of three during processing of the image, in order to make its brightness comparable to that of Saturn.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera at a distance of 8.3 million kilometers (5.2 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 49 kilometers (30 miles) per pixel.

SATURN DAILY

Night Of The Two Moons

Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 03, 2004
There was a silver lining to the clouds that blocked Martin Ratcliffe's view of the Oct. 27 lunar eclipse, so the director of Exploration Place, in Wichita, KS, tuned into an eclipse Internet broadcast from Olso, Norway, instead- while also viewing a steady stream of images beamed back from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, as it flew by Saturn's moon Titan, on October 27.
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