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Baghdad and Cairo Sulci on Enceladus (possible True Colors; credits: Lunexit)
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Caption NASA:"Cassini shot past the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus on Aug. 11, 2008, acquiring a set of 7 HR images targeting known hot spot locations on the moon's "Tiger Stripe" fractures, or Sulci.
Five of those images are presented in this mosaic.
Features on Enceladus are named for characters and places from "The Arabian Nights", and the four most prominent Sulci are named Alexandria, Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus. Here, Baghdad Sulcus runs across the top mosaic tile, from lower left to upper right. Cairo Sulcus runs from left to right just beneath the center tile.
One highly anticipated result of this flyby was to pinpoint previously identified source locations for the jets that blast icy particles, water vapor and trace organics into space.
The yellow circles indicate the Jets' Source Locations I and V, as identified in PIA08385" .
Scientists are using these new images to study geologic activity associated with the sulci, and effects on the surrounding terrain. This information, coupled with observations by Cassini's other instruments, may answer the question of whether reservoirs of liquid water exist beneath the surface.
The mosaic consists of five images taken with the clear spectral filters on Cassini's narrow-angle camera. The view is an orthographic projection with an image scale of 14,5 meters (47,5 feet) per pixel. The area shown here is centered on 81,6° South Latitude and 56,5° West Longitude. The original images ranged in resolution from 10 to 24 meters (33 to 79 feet) per pixel and were taken at distances ranging from 1288 to 3600 Km (such as from about 800 to approx. 2237 miles) from Enceladus".
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