NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has snapped a beautiful photo of two Saturnian moons, Dione and Enceladus.
This image, taken with Cassini’s narrow-angle camera on September 8, shows Dione (near) and Enceladus (far). Although these moons are composed of nearly the same materials, Enceladus has a considerably higher reflectivity than Dione. This view looks toward the leading hemisphere of Enceladus. North on Enceladus is up and rotated 1 degree to the right. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.
The probe’s narrow-angle camera took this picture of Dione and Enceladus on September 8, 2015.
The view was acquired at a distance of roughly 52,000 miles (83,000 km) from Dione and roughly 228,000 miles (364,000 km) from Enceladus.
At 697 miles (1,122 km) in diameter, Dione is the fourth nearest of the major regular moons of Saturn and the 15th largest moon in the Solar System.
Dione’s features include fractured areas, very cratered terrain with craters as large as 62 miles (100 km) across, as well as moderately and lightly cratered plains.
Enceladus, the sixth-largest of Saturn’s moons, has a diameter of only 314 miles (505 km), about a tenth of that of Titan.
The moon displays at least five different types of terrain: parts of the moon show craters no larger than 22 miles (35 km) in diameter; other areas show regions with no craters, indicating resurfacing events in the geologically recent past. There are fissures, plains, corrugated terrain and other crustal deformations.
The surface of Enceladus endures a constant rain of ice grains from its south polar jets.
As a result, its surface is more like bright snow than Dione’s older, weathered surface.
As clean, fresh surfaces are left exposed in space, they slowly gather dust and radiation damage and darken in a process known as ‘space weathering.’
