The "Fountains" of Enceladus

Caption NASA originale:"The ice-jets of Enceladus send particles streaming into space hundreds of kilometers above the South Pole of this spectacularly active moon. Some of the particles escape to form the diffuse E-Ring around Saturn.

This color-coded image was processed to enhance faint signals, making the contours and extent of the fainter, larger-scale component of the plume easier to see.

The bright strip behind and above Enceladus is the E-Ring, in which this intriguing body resides. The small round object at far left is a background star.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 24, 2006 at a distance of approx. 1,9 MKM (sucg as about 1,2 MMs) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 162°. Image scale is about 11 Km (approx. 7 miles) per pixel".