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The Cassini spacecraft has taken a some recent images of two of Saturn’s most notorious moons, where in both images the planet’s rings serve as a backdrop. Above, Enceladus stands out with its cratered surface, but Cassini’s camera also catches a glimpse of the planet’s rings in the background. Geologically young terrain in the middle latitudes of the moon shifts to older, cratered terrain in the northern latitudes.
The image was taken during the spacecraft’s flyby of Enceladus on Nov. 30, 2010, in visible with Cassini’s spacecraft narrow-angle camera, from a distance of approximately 46,000 kilometers (29,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 276 meters (906 feet) per pixel.
Below is a ‘raw’ view of Titan, and the rings.
This close-up view of Titan was taken on January 15, 2011, shows the cloudy atmosphere of the moon, with the rings in the background. Cassini was about 839,213 kilometers away from Titan.
We’ve got to get a robotic probe to the surface of Titan post haste! Forget manned missions to the Moon or Mars, this is where the exciting science lives.