ESA: Enceladus rains water onto Saturn - images

At least four distinct plumes of water ice spew out from the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Light reflected off Saturn is illuminating the moon while the sun, almost directly behind Enceladus, is backlighting the plumes.

This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Enceladus (504 kilometers across). North is up.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 25, 2009.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 617,000 kilometers from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 174 degrees. Image scale is 4 kilometers per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute