Saturn's Moon Plays Hide-and-Seek With Cassini

By jmajor - November 14, 2011 at 6:02 PM UTC | Planetary Science

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Taken during the Cassini spacecraft's

October 1 flyby

of Saturn's ice-spewing moon, this image – released today – shows a crescent-lit Enceladus with southern geysers in action... and the much smaller Epimetheus peeking out from behind!

[caption id="attachment_90968" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Epimetheus"]

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The 70-mile (113-km) -wide

Epimetheus

is dwarfed by its larger sibling Enceladus, which is 313 miles (504 km) in diameter... about the width of the state of Arizona.

One of the most reflective objects in the solar system, Enceladus appears to be casting some reflected light onto Epimetheus as well. (Image processors at the

Cassini Imaging Lab

have brightened the moons by a factor of 1.8 relative to the rings in order to bring out detail.)

Some bright clumps of material can also be seen orbiting within Saturn's rings at upper left, possibly stirred up by the movement of the shepherd moon

Pan

.

See this and more images

at the CICLOPS site here.

Image credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute.