Enceladus: photomosaic

Caption NASA originale:"The view is about 300 Km across and shows the myriad of faults, fractures, folds, troughs and craters that make this Saturnian Satellite especially intriguing to planetary scientists. More than 20 years ago, NASA's Voyager spacecraft gave hints of a surface cut by tectonic features and subsequent images of other icy moons have revealed many different ways that stresses have acted on icy moon crusts. The new close-up images of Enceladus, which has a diameter of 505 Km, show some familiar-looking features and others that are brand new. Extending downward from the top center of the mosaic for hundreds of kilometers is a broad belt of complex, interwoven fractures. A huge rift 5 Km-wide dissects this belt and extends into several older-looking, distinct regions or "cells" of terrain that themselves exhibit distinct fracture patterns. The work required to unravel their origins, their formation sequence, and the implications for the evolution of icy Solar System bodies is just beginning...".