Move Over Caravaggio: Cassini's Light and Dark Moons
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Move Over Caravaggio: Cassini's Light and Dark Moons
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
August 16, 2010
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has returned Saturnian moon images from its
flyby late last week, revealing light and dark contrasts worthy of
chiaroscuro painters like Caravaggio.
The flyby on August 13 targeted the geyser moon Enceladus, but also
brought Cassini close to two other moons--Tethys and Dione.
The raw images include the best ones to date of Penelope crater on the
icy moon Tethys . Penelope crater, which is 150 kilometers (90 miles)
wide, is the second-largest crater on Tethys.
Cassini was also able to obtain a portrait of Enceladus
over the bright arc of Saturn's atmosphere and a moody still life
of one of the "tiger stripe" fissures at the Enceladus south polar
region on the cusp of darkness . This particular "tiger stripe" -- which
is the nickname for the fissures spewing water vapor and organic
particles out into space - is called Damascus Sulcus. It was also the
subject of a heat scan by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer.
Scientists are still analyzing the results.
Images of Dione highlight the moon's battered surface
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, 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.
More raw images from the Enceladus flyby, dubbed "E11," are available
at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/.
More information about the Cassini-Huygens mission is at:
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .
Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jia-rui...@jpl.nasa.gov
2010-270