Picures At 40,000 MPH!

[Speed]

Monday, the Cassini spacecraft raced over Enceladus, just 30 miles from it's surface. While making this flyby, it took some detailed photos of the "tiger stripes" that produce water ice geysers.

The Cassini imaging team posted the following:

August 12, 2008 Dear Friends and Colleagues, The images from Cassini's latest maneuver over Enceladus are finally down on the ground, and what a dazzling success! There appears to be no smear in any of them, despite traveling, with shutter open, at 40,000 miles per hour. Clearly our bold technique of skeet-shooting went very well. Damn, we do good work! It will take a bit of time to figure out exactly where we're looking, but it appears already our pointing was excellent and we've captured, at close range, several of the `tiger stripe' fractures that cross the south polar terrain. Go to ... http://ciclops.org ... and you'll see exactly what all the excitement is about.

Here is the Sky and Telescope link about the flyby as well:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/26909549.html

[Frog]

I wonder what those little bumps all over the place are?

[starriderrick]

Great stuff Speed! Thanks for sharing. Very exciting...yeah.

With regards,

Rick

[barb_48]

Thanks for the info. I'm going to save that site for futue reference.