the Cassini spacecraft conducted a flyby of Saturn’s sixth-largest moon, Enceladus, snapping some rather breathtaking photos along the way. The flyby, whose purpose was to gather the highest-resolution photos ever of the moon’s southern polar region and to thermally map the “tiger stripe” terrain there, gathered some stunning images including some of the geyser-like plumes Cassini discovered on the moon’s surface during previous flybys.

The photos themselves provided by Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) are raw and unprocessed, but along with the thermal data they should help researchers piece together a detailed map of Enceladus’s geologically active southern pole.

(Source: futurenow321)