CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS

Enceladus Rev 80 Flyby Skeet Shoot #1
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Enceladus Rev 80 Flyby Skeet Shoot #1
PIA 11105
Avg Rating: 8.65/10

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   This image is the first skeet-shoot image taken during Cassini's very close flyby of Enceladus on Aug. 11, 2008. It captures a region near the Cairo Sulcus on Enceladus' south polar terrain that is littered with blocks of ice. (The image is upside down from the skeet-shoot footprint shown here.)

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 11, 2008 a distance of approximately 1,288 kilometers (800 miles) above the surface of Enceladus. Image scale is approximately 10 meters (33 feet) per pixel.

The Cassini Equinox Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. 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 was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini Equinox Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: August 12, 2008 (PIA 11105)
Image/Caption Information


Alliance Member Comments
Dragon_of_Luck_Mah_Jonng1971 (Oct 11, 2008 at 6:59 PM):
Yes, 3488 is right -- ice boulders, no rock boulders, because they ( I think that's the reason ) reflect the sunlight very well.

So then, we already know something important. That's that we know it's no rock or rock/ice mixed boulders. But there is still so much to be learned about that Landscape. I think that at least some shapes of it are being made by up-welling of ( 'slushy' ? ) ice immediately after a new rift opened and pulled its sides apart. But the picture is showing a widespread, very complex activity. Several processed, I think, are happening at the same time. It reminded me a bit of the highest resolution picture of Europa taken by the Galileo spacecraft and that image is also on this website. And a bit less reminded me on some Galileo pictures of Ganymede's active regions taken by high resolution.
NeKto (Aug 13, 2008 at 12:41 PM):
Understatement;
"Damn, we do good work!"

Carolyn Porco 12 August 2008
DEChengst (Aug 13, 2008 at 12:35 PM):
Got home from work and first thing I did was to point my webbrowser at ciclops.org. Awesome just plain awesome. Looking forward to the other flybys as well.
Red_dragon (Aug 13, 2008 at 9:33 AM):
Excellent work!. I was sure Cassini would do it again. The raw images are least to say astounding -even more than those of the last flyby, in march-, with that impressive resolution and that terrain that seems to be out of place -especially this one that seems to have been taken near the terminator.- The "skeet shot" technic has worked beautifully...and surely we've not seen all the images.

The more the mission progresses, the more I love it. And the best will come in october, flying by Enceladus at just *25* kilometers. Sometimes, I feel as I was living a sci-fi movie instead of a space mission...
Mercury_3488 (Aug 12, 2008 at 5:14 PM):
Incredible, incredible.

Ten metres per pixel. Ice boulders, small valleys, much, much activity here, just incredible, thank you so very, very much. Very well done to ALL involved.

I bet you are very proud Carolyn. You should be.

Andrew Brown.

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