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This raw, unprocessed image of Enceladus was taken by Cassini on Nov. 21, 2009.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 21, 2009. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 2,000 kilometers (1000 miles) from Enceladus and at a high Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle. Image scale is approximately 12 meters (38 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: November 21, 2009
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Frankypouh: After further examination of the site, I now suppose that the radial features were created without help of the boulders. And that the boulders were a long time at their present positions and didn't roll down that hill. Because the size of the boulders and the width of the 'tracks' don't fit.
Also I saw that the 'tracks' continued to the valley floor generally.
( Sorry for the part of my first explanation I now have corrected. )
Frankypouh: Very good observation ! I can imagine what you mean. It's the feature at the end of this 'valley'. I think it's a hill with a flat summit ( the flat part shaped almost like an egg ) . To the right and upper right ( east and northeast if the top of the image is north ) of this feature there are very large boulders I think ( roughly 25 to 150 meters in size I suppose ) that ( seem to have ) rolled/tumbled down the slope of that hill. They left boulder tracks, I suppose. These are your radial feature. The boulders stopped rolling a bit more than halfway to the next valley floor, I suppose. Given the image's resolution I estimated the 'hill' being roughly 150 to 360 meters high.
Seems the lighting conditions are much more definitive here than the Skeet Shoot
At the end of a stripe in the middle upper part, there is a little radial like feature what is it ? And one more time, congratulations for this astonishing work!
Francois.
Approximately 12 mpp - very high resolution.
( A side note: Here a valley in the middle and at the right has got very large differences of the inclination of its slopes. But I suppose that it's also a rift valley on Enc as we know them from Enc early of the Casini mission. )
impressive. most impressive... ;) wonderful pictures!!! best regards and congratulations!!!
