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Satnews Daily
January 8th, 2009

An Eclipsing Moment For Enceladus


In Saturn's shadow, the southern hemisphere of Enceladus is lit by sunlight reflected first off the rings and then onto the nightside of the planet.

Cassini Enceladus eclipse NASA Other sources of illumination include sunlight reflected off Titan, Dione, and Rhea, which, at the time this image was acquired, were all positioned in the same place in the Enceladan sky. The deep Labtayt Sulci lie at the top of this image, which is nearly centered on the moon's South pole. While features in the center of this image are in sharp focus, those near the limb appear blurred as the spacecraft was receding from Enceladus at 16 kilometers (10 miles) per second during this long exposure. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on October 31, 2008 at a distance of approximately 137,000 kilometers (85,100 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 73 degrees. Image scale is 818 meters (2,682 feet) per pixel.