First Images From 50-km Enceladus Flyby

CheshireCatCO writes "The first pictures from yesterday's flyby of Enceladus are now public. At closest approach, Cassini was set spinning to cancel out the apparent motion of Enceladus so as to capture unsmeared images during the 40,000-mph flyby. Although it wasn't clear that this would work (errors in pointing could easily have made the cameras miss their targets), the maneuver panned out beautifully, producing spectacular images of the surface. Images show the 'tiger stripes' at the south pole, including at least one location that has been identified as a source of a jet, as well as considerable vertical relief, easily visible thanks to the low sun-angle near the south pole at present. Processed, enhanced images should follow shortly."

Comments

Already Slashdotted?

[Snowblindeye]

The Ciclops site seems to be unresponsive already. Nasa's coverage can be found here http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/events/enceladus20080811/index.cfm

Re:NASA site and images

[bugg_tb]

The images are also here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/index.cfm

Re:Why is this free?

[Stooshie]

... Millions of American taxpayer dollars have been spent gathering this priceless data that is totally unavailable in any other context ...

Most space programs are internationally funded and carried out by universities of more than one country these days. Of course the data should be made available.

... I can guarantee you that any other nation's research programmes would not do this ...

Yes they do