unknownskywalker:

Enceladus and Dione Rev 165 Raw Preview

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured these raw, unprocessed images of Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Dione during close flybys on May 2, 2012. The flybys were the last close encounters of these icy moons that Cassini will make for three years.

Cassini flew by Enceladus at an altitude of about 74 km capturing the icy south polar plume, which consists of jets of water ice, water vapor and organic compounds sprayed into space from the moon’s famed “tiger stripe” fractures. The plume images were captured at distances ranging from 416,000 km down to 106,000 km when the satellite was just a thin crescent and the plume was backlit.

Shortly after passing Enceladus, Cassini had a non-targeted encounter of Dione. At closest-approach, the spacecraft flew within about 8,000 km of the moon. Cassini’s cameras captured several mosaics during this encounter, including one taken around the time of closest approach that covered a fracture named Latium Chasma at resolutions of about 53 meters per pixel.

Other mosaics cover much of Dione’s northern hemisphere that faces away from Saturn in its orbit, focusing particularly on the moon’s ridges, an ancient impact basin and the wispy streaks that Cassini scientists now know are tectonic fractures.

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    Images of Enceladus; the sixth largest moon of Saturn with liquid water under its surface. Capable of sustaining life.
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    Enceladus and Dione Rev 165
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