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Cassini dances with Enceladus once again

The Cassini spacecraft Enceladus flyby reveals stunning images of geyser activity on Enceladus, showcasing Saturn's icy moon's beauty.

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Today (as I write this), the Cassini spacecraft passed just a hair under 100 km (62 miles) from the surface of Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn. This little moon is scientifically incredibly interesting; there are geysers at the south pole that are spewing out water! The images are just now coming in, and have not been calibrated or processed yet, but they are still breathtaking. I particularly like this one:

[Click to embiggen, as usual.] That, me droogs, is high art. Enceladus was about 190,000 km (118,000 miles) away from Cassini when that shot was taken, a little under half the distance of the Earth to the Moon. From this angle, Enceladus is lit in a gorgeous thin crescent, but we can see detail on the dark side, I suspect due to light reflecting off Saturn onto the moon. You can see ridges in the surface; the moon has ...

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