Emily Lakdawalla of The Planetary Society calls this “the most amazing image of Enceladus Cassini has captured yet.” While I like some of the images from November’s flyby a bit more, this is still very, very cool! It is a combination of two images (processed by unmannedspaceflight.com member Astro0) taken during the same flyby event, showing a view across Enceladus’ south pole, three of its ice geysers in full blast and backlit by the sun. Saturn’s shadowed rings cut across the face of Titan in the distance, its encircling haze layer glowing with scattered sunlight.

Each image in its own right is amazing, but combined to make an entirely plausible view the result really is stunning. Nice work Astro0!

With such a diverse family of moons circling such a beautiful planet as Saturn there’s countless opportunities for wonderful photo compositions like this. Read more on Emily’s blog post here.

Image: NASA / JPL / SSI / processed by Astro0/unmannedspaceflight.com.

And here’s a couple other images from the May 18 flyby of Enceladus:

Raw image credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. Visit the Cassini mission page here.