Gordan of course.

This has to be one of the greatest, most alien images ever taken from robotic spacecraft. It approaches how I might expect Enceladus to be depicted if it were in a Star Trek movie. As if the plumes at the edge of the disk back-lit by the Sun were not enough… the trail of smaller plumes breaking through the darkness is absolutely fantastic. The above is a real image but the color is an artistic interpretation by someone would know. Considering how little color is usually found at Enceladus, we can image this is really as good as if it were compiled from a full RGB set of filters. A larger monotone of the same image here.

This image was compiled by Astro0 on unmannedspaceflight.com. Also one of the best views staring down the length of one of Enceladus’ “tiger stripes”.

Ever so sharp look straight down on the South Pole of Enceladus from 1,855 km.

On its way to a 2014 rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, with JPL instruments on board, flew past Earth today to pick up energy.

Like the Saturnshine image posted earlier, this is only an estimation of a true color image. Five sources were used to compile this image; clear 1, clear 2, red, blue and another clear filtered image was used to replace the missing green to round it out (this work by S_Walker from unmannedspaceflight.com). We then additionally cleaned out artifacts from the original images and blurred the surrounding geyser haze largely to eliminate posterization noise.

This is the first time anyone has been able to attempt a true color view of the geysers with the availability of the red and blue images. Also a bonus is the considerable amount of Saturnshine seen on the dark side of the moon.

More coming. Looks like a nice encounter.

Gordan U compiled this image of Enceladus lit both by Sun and Saturnshine. The side lit by reflected light from Saturn is in infrared and in the original appeared in a green hue. I took some liberties and imaged it as I would imagine it really would appear to the eye in Saturn’s more orange/yellow hues.

Worth noting tomorrow the images are due in from Cassini’s closest approach yet through its plumes. Hoping for some amazing material.