NASA Cassini Saturn Image: Saturn and moons in holiday dress

The globe of Saturn, seen here in natural color, is reminiscent of a holiday ornament in this wide-angle view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

This holiday season, feast your eyes on images of Saturn and two of its most fascinating moons, Titan and Enceladus, in a care package from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

All three bodies are dressed and dazzling in this special package assembled by Cassini's imaging team.

"During this, our tenth holiday season at Saturn, we hope that these images from Cassini remind everyone the world over of the significance of our discoveries in exploring such a remote and beautiful planetary system," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader, based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. "Happy holidays from all of us on Cassini."

Two views of Enceladus are included in the package and highlight the many fissures, fractures and ridges that decorate the icy moon's surface.

Enceladus is a white, glittering snowball of a moon, now famous for the nearly 100 geysers that are spread across its south polar region and spout tiny icy particles into space.

Most of these particles fall back to the surface as snow. Some small fraction escapes the gravity of Enceladus and makes its way into orbit around Saturn, forming the planet's extensive and diffuse E ring.

Because scientists believe these geysers are directly connected to a subsurface, salty, organic-rich, liquid-water reservoir, Enceladus is home to one of the most accessible extraterrestrial habitable zones in the solar system.

A dynamical interplay between Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and its rings is captured in this view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. 

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Packaged along with Saturn and Enceladus is a group of natural-colour images of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, highlighting two of Titan's most outstanding features.

Peering through the moon's hazy, orange atmosphere, the Cassini narrow-angle camera spots dark, splotchy features in the polar regions of the moon.

These features are the lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane for which the moon is renowned.

Titan is the only other place in the solar system that we know has stable liquids on its surface, though in Titan's case, the liquids are ethane and methane rather than water.

At Titan's south pole, a swirling high-altitude vortex stands out distinctly against the darkness of the moon's un-illuminated atmosphere.

Titan's hazy atmosphere and surface environment are believed to be similar in certain respects to the early atmosphere of Earth.

More information: The new images are available online at: www.nasa.gov/cassini , saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and ciclops.org .