On Monday Cassini had its closest encounter to date with the intriguing moon Enceladus, which spews water vapor from a number of points along the infamous “tiger stripe” fissures over its south pole. The closest approach to the Moon was up near the equator, and the trajectory of the spacecraft took skimming along the perimeter of the boundaries of Enceladus’s geysers. Turning back to look at the south pole as it flew away, Cassini had to maneuver quickly to capture clean pictures. The imaging team has now been able to piece together and “navigate” the images, meaning they have figured out where on Enceladus each image is. Tying this together with earlier work by Joe Spitale, Carolyn Porco, and others on the imaging team that identified various jets from the tiger stripes, they have now given us the first close-up views of two source regions.
Image Credit: JPL/NASA/SSI
Image Credit: JPL/NASA/SSI