The plume and tiger stripes are clearly visible in the Cassini approach images of the moon Enceladus

A few hours after the transit flight it was already possible to view the pictures showing the interesting contours.

Written by Nancy Atkinson. Translation: Avi Blizovsky

NASA released raw images from Cassini's eighth flyby of Saturn's enigmatic moon Enceladus yesterday (November 21).
In the raw images you can see several plumes of gas coming out of cracks in the south pole area of ​​Enceladus.
These fissures spit jets of water vapor and other particles hundreds of kilometers above the ground. This time the transition flight was at a different angle and flight direction than the previous ones and therefore provided a different view of the plumes. The Cassini spacecraft reached a distance of 1,606 km from the surface, passing by the latitude of 82 degrees south. This will be our last view of this fascinating area of ​​Enceladus before the winter frost covers this area.

Another important image launched by the Cassini spacecraft is of a configuration known as the "Baghdad grooves" or with a slightly more poetic name - the "tiger stripes" that scientists are focusing on.

While Cassini was taking these high-resolution images of the southernmost part of the Southern Hemisphere, the Complex Infrared Spectrograph instrument focused on creating a complete thermal map of the tiger stripes surrounding Enceladus at 60 south latitude. One photo was taken from a distance of 1,858 kilometers (and can be seen in the link attached to the original article). The image we see here was taken when Cassini was 3,556 kilometers away.

Get ready for more images and data from Cassini's flyby of Enceladus.

For the news in Universe Today

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• Cassini will pass through Enceladus' ice plume
• Ice-spewing volcanoes on Enceladus
• Liquid water on Enceladus
• The source of Enceladus' water geysers is the friction of ice plates
• Can life be discovered on Enceladus?