Written by Rosemary Sullivant
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Pasadena, CA – Saturn’s moon Enceladus shows its icy face and famous plumes in raw, unprocessed images captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during its successful flyby on November 6th, 2011.
During this Enceladus encounter, the 16th of Cassini’s mission, the spacecraft passed the moon at distance of about 300 miles (500 kilometers) at 10:11pm PDT on November 5th (04:49 UTC on November 6th).
NASA's Cassini spacecraft obtained this unprocessed image of Enceladus on November 6th, 2011 and received on Earth November 7th, 2011. The camera was pointing toward Enceladus at approximately 144,790 kilometers away, and the image was taken using the CL1 and CL2 filters. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA’s 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.
Raw, unprocessed image of Saturn's moon Enceladus. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)