Contact: Preston Dyches
preston@ciclops.org
720-974-5859
Space Science Institute

A Pearl at Dusk

Caption: Enceladus hangs like a single bright pearl against the golden-brown canvas of Saturn and its icy rings. Visible on Saturn is the region where daylight gives way to dusk. Above, the rings throw thin shadows onto the planet.

Icy Enceladus is 505 kilometers (314 miles) across.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were taken using the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 17, 2006 at a distance of approximately 200,000 kilometers (100,000 miles) from Enceladus. The image scale is 10 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel.

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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. 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.

Credit: Cassini Imaging Team & NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Usage Restrictions: Image is in the public domain. Appropriate caption is requested.