Crescent Enceladus

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Caption:

The Cassini spacecraft observes the wrinkled surface of Enceladus. The geologically active south polar region is visible at bottom.

This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across). Lit terrain is on the moon's leading hemisphere. North is up and rotated 16 degrees to the right.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 2, 2008. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 285,000 kilometers (177,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 108 degrees. Image scale is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel.

Background Info:

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. 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 and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/ . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

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