CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Ring Backdrop

Saturn's moon Enceladus reflects sunlight brightly before a backdrop of the planet's rings and the shadows cast onto the planet by the rings.

Cassini captured this snapshot during its flyby of the moon on Nov. 30, 2010. This view looks toward the anti-Saturn side of Enceladus (504 kilometers, 313 miles across). North on Enceladus is up and rotated 28 degrees to the right.

This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from less than a degree above the ringplane.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 53,000 kilometers (33,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 14 degrees. Image scale is 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini Solstice Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. 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.

For more information about the Cassini Solstice Mission visit http://ciclops.org, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: January 3, 2011 (PIA 12747)
Image/Caption Information 		  Ring Backdrop
PIA 12747
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