image: This image of Enceladus was taken by Cassini on November 27, 2005.
The image has been rotated 90 degrees from its original orientation, in order to facilitate comparison with other released images taken at nearly the same time (see PIAs 07758, 077759 & 07760), but is otherwise unprocessed.
The plume of ice particles and water vapor shown in the image is overexposed, although this serves to show the great extent of the plume above the moon's surface.
The image was taken with the narrow angle camera from a distance of approximately 170,600 kilometers (106,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 161 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) 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