Media Information

 
 
 
Collection:
NASA Cassini-Huygens Collection
Title:
Fountains of Enceladus - Image #2
Description:
Fountains of Enceladus - Image #2
Full Description:
Recent Cassini images of Saturn's moon Enceladus backlit by the sun show the fountain-like sources of the fine spray of material that towers over the south polar region. The image was taken looking more or less broadside at the "tiger stripe" fractures observed in earlier Enceladus images. It shows discrete plumes of a variety of apparent sizes above the limb of the moon.

The greatly enhanced and colorized image shows the enormous extent of the fainter, larger-scale component of the plume.

Imaging scientists, as reported in the journal Science on March 10, 2006, believe that the jets are geysers erupting from pressurized subsurface reservoirs of liquid water above 273 degrees Kelvin (0 degrees Celsius).

This caption was updated on March 9, 2006.

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

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.n…. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

*Credit:* NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Date:
November 28, 2005
Keywords:
Enceladus
Keywords:
backlit
Keywords:
fountain-like
Keywords:
spray
Keywords:
colorized
facet_what:
Saturn
facet_what:
Cassini
facet_what:
Cassini-Huygens
facet_what:
Huygens Probe
facet_what:
Moon
facet_what:
Cassini Orbiter
facet_what:
Sun
facet_what:
Polar
facet_what:
Enceladus
facet_where:
Saturn
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
facet_where:
California
facet_where:
Washington
facet_where:
Enceladus
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
facet_where:
Washington, D.C.
facet_when:
March 10, 2006
facet_when:
March 9, 2006
facet_when:
November 28, 2005
facet_when_year:
2006
facet_when_year:
2005
UID:
SPD-SATRN-1874
original url:

Fountains of Enceladus - Image #2