Holy ice spray! This image, released today, shows a dramatic view of Enceladus with geysers in full force, obtained by Cassini while the sun (behind Enceladus) backlit the geysers and reflected light off Saturn illuminated the face of the moon. There couldn’t be a better lighting setup for a scenario like this! In a word:…
Tag: geyser
A Cassini Composition
Cassini took this beautiful image of a crescent-lit Enceladus shadowed against Saturn’s silhouette during Friday’s flyby, demonstrating once again its uncanny ability to capture wonderfully-composed shots that illustrate the inherent beauty of our family of planets. Enceladus is the now-famous moon with “jet-power”…continually erupting geysers spray water ice out into space from long “tiger stripe”…
Jet Setter
The icy Enceladus shows off its southern geysers, stately hovering in orbit around Saturn in this raw image from the Cassini spacecraft, taken on Christmas day. It is impressive to get such a clear view of the geysers with the low phase angle of the sunlight. Typically the geysers are only seen when the sun…
The Results Are In
The data is in from today’s flyby of Enceladus and the images so far have not disappointed! The moon’s characteristic southern jets are running at full power, seen above, backlit by the sun and thereby easily visible to Cassini’s cameras. Below are a couple more images, one of Enceladus’ illuminated icy face with Saturn’s ringplane…
Pieces of Flare
With Enceladus in the spotlight this week (see previous post) Cassini’s camera was trained on the icy moon and captured several images which seem to show its signature polar jets in action. Spliced together, these photos create an intriguing animation that, while not exactly clear as to what’s going on, is interesting to watch….
Enigmatic Enceladus
The tortured terrain of Enceladus (en-SELL-a-dus) comes into light in this image taken by Cassini last October. This is actually a false-color mosaic of 28 images, assembled by the imaging operations center in Boulder, CO. The bluish tints are used to highlight features on the moon’s surface and show different densities of surface material. I rotated…
Lights in the Dark 