NASA's Cassini spacecraft has successfully completed its flyby over the "tiger stripes" in the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus and has sent back images of its passage.

The spacecraft also targeted the moon Tethys.

The tiger stripes are actually giant fissures that spew jets of water vapor and organic particles hundreds of kilometers, or miles, out into space.

While the winter is darkening the moon's southern hemisphere, Cassini has its own version of "night vision goggles" - the composite infrared spectrometer instrument - to track heat even when visible light is low.

It will take time for scientists to assemble the data into temperature maps of the fissures.