Fresh close-ups of Enceladus from Cassini

These images of Enceladus were released just a few minutes ago by Carolyn Porco, the awesome principal investigator for the Cassini Mission. They haven’t been through photoshop or cleaned up in anyway, but they still look gorgeous in their unprocessed state. These pictures are made available through CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations) which is the team responsible for gathering all the visual goodness that Cassini acquires. I highly recommend checking out their website as they have a ton of great information and pictures concerning the Saturnian system.

Enceladus and the rings of Saturn (Image from NASA/JPL)

Relatively smooth surface of Enceladus gives way to craters in the bottom portion of the image (Image from NASA/JPL)

This image shows the stark difference in terrain- older craters in the center juxtaposed against the younger, sinew like ridges on the left (Image from NASA/JPL)

Cause I can’t get enough of Saturn

The Cassini mission really is like crack for me. I love digging through the raw images and seeing what comes up. It can be a bit of mixed back sometimes, but I enjoy the hunt of looking through all the unprocessed images and see what Cassini is churning out. This one of Enceladus may not be as dramatic as the one with the plumes, but I think the crescent shape adds a different flavor to my favorite moon.