The Stunning Icy Landscape of Saturn's Moon Enceladus.

These are the stunning images captured by the Cassini spacecraft as it headed towards Saturn's moon Enceladus before it made a daring dive just miles from the surface.

Travelling at 40,000MPH and just 82,000ft over the moon, the 'white-knuckle' flyby was the closest yet past any of Saturn's moons.

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Some stunning pictures taken from just 16 miles above the moon's surface!



(fixed link)

[edit on 14-10-2008 by Jbird]

the link doesn't seem to work

i'm not sure why or i would offer help

make copy the link and make sure the end is .html

nice pictures indeed, reminds me of Hoth the Ice planet from Star Wars

For football's sake! lol

Let's see if this one does.

omg those pictures are beautiful!

especially the one from 2006

it looks like a gigantic round winterfresh breath mint and that makes me happy

That's beautiful. In the third photo, it looks like veins running across the surface of the planet. Eerie and lovely.

reply to post by Barathrum

it looks like a gigantic round winterfresh breath mint and that makes me happy

A breath mint gobstopper! Looks more like a fairly large and waterless fur ball.

But, with that, it is an eerily beautiful fur ball (or tumbleweed without the tumble or the weed). Looks like one hell of a 'grand' canyon there in the center.

Good find! Its like something I would have as my desktop background.

reply to post by jakyll


Thanks for the post - very cool pics - the last one of the southern hemisphere is awesome. Wish I had more to add but am awed by the stark beauty.

ColoradoJens

Thanks for the replies.
Have tried to find some more photos,but no more appear to have been released as yet.

Good stuff...



The terrain sure looks unique; wonder if it was caused by lava or glaciers...anyone know?

I will see if I can find info on the terrain...

Article

Brief Enceladus description...
Enceladus [en-SELL-ah-dus] is one of the innermost moons of Saturn. It is quite similar in size to Mimas but has a smoother, brighter surface. Enceladus reflects almost 100 percent of the sunlight that strikes it. Unlike Mimas, Enceladus displays at least five different types of terrain. Parts of Enceladus shows craters no larger than 35 km in diameter. Other areas show regions with no craters indicating major resurfacing events in the geologically recent past. There are fissures, plains, corrugated terrain and other crustal deformations. All of this indicates that the interior of the moon may be liquid today, even though it should have frozen aeons ago. It is postulated that Enceladus is heated by a tidal mechanism similar to Jupiter's moon Io. It is perturbed in its orbit by Saturn's gravitational field and by the large neighboring satellites Tethys and Dione. Because Enceladus reflects so much sunlight, the surface temperature is only -201° C (-330° F).

Interesting stuff...wonder if the interior is still liquid.

That would be something to behold as well...