Saturn's moon Enceladus. - Fotografia de stock

March 9, 2005 - Exploring Icy Canyons. Fine topographic detail and color variations are revealed in this 11-image, false color mosaic taken during Cassini's second close flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus. This mosaic shows the center of the anti-Saturnian hemisphere of Enceladus, the side of Enceladus that always faces away from Saturn. The left portion of the mosaic is dominated by Diyar Planitia. The region is characterized by low ridges and troughs. Throughout this region, fractures of all sizes cut across Diyar Planitia and the older, cratered terrain at center and right. Many of the younger fractures have blue-green walls, revealing coarse-grained water ice in the top layers of Enceladus' lithosphere, compared to the fine-grained ice that coats much of Enceladus' surface. The blue-green color is very similar to the coatings of the south polar tiger stripes. This mosaic consists of 11 false-color footprints (33 images total) taken by the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera. The mosaic uses an ultraviolet filter centered at 338 nanometers for blue, a green filter centered at 568 nanometers for green and a near-infrared filter centered at 930 nanometers for red, thus covering a wider spectrum region than the human eye. The region is centered at 3.9 degrees north latitude, 208.9 degrees west longitude and covers an area 233 kilometers (145 miles) by 154 kilometers (96 miles) in size.