Saturn's massive atmosphere appears poised to crush little
Enceladus in this image. Many fascinating details are visible in
the gas planet's sinuous bands, such as a giant, eye-shaped
storm that circles the south pole. The diameter of Enceladus is
499 kilometers, (310 miles). The image was taken in visible blue
light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Oct.
12, 2004, at a distance of about 5.3 million kilometers (3.3
million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or
phase, angle of 68 degrees. The image scale is 31 kilometers (19
miles) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative
project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space
Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the
Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard
cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The
imaging team is based at the Space Scie