As Titan Turns

Enceladus's unusual plume is only easily visible when the Cassini spacecraft and the Sun are on opposite sides of Enceladus. So what's lighting up the moon then?

As Cassini approached the intriguing ice world of Enceladus for its extremely close flyby on July 14, 2005, the spacecraft obtained images in several wavelengths that were used to create this false...

+ Unannotated Version The northern and southern hemispheres of Enceladus are seen in these polar stereographic maps, mosaicked from the best-available Cassini clear-filter images. Each map is...

This image, taken on June 18, 2015 by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows dwarf planet Ceres from an altitude of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers) -- a mountain 3 miles (5 kilometers) high, surrounded by re...

This view from NASA's Dawn spacecraft captures a portion of Ceres near the equator, including a crater surrounded by bright material. The image is centered at approximately 2.5 degrees south latitu...

Most planetary rings appear to be shaped, at least in part, by moons orbiting their planets, but nowhere is that more evident than in Saturn's F ring. 

This image NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows a fresh scarp rimmed crater on asteroid Vesta with a remarkable distribution of bright and dark material in its interior.

One hemisphere of Iapetus is covered with very reflective material while the other hemisphere is covered with some of the darkest material in the solar system. The leading hemisphere of Iapetus (...

Some of Iapetus' dark surface interrupts the moon's lighter terrain in this Cassini spacecraft view. Scientists continue to investigate the nature of this moon's dark and light surface. See Global...

The "H"-shaped region Fensal-Aztlan is faintly visible on Saturn's murky moon Titan in this enhanced clear-filter view from Cassini. While most of the light passing through the clear filters is vi...

This 3-D image of asteroid Vesta from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows hills, troughs, ridges and steep craters. You need 3D glasses to view this image.

The solar system's largest moon, Ganymede, is captured here alongside the planet Jupiter in a color picture taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 3, 2000.

This close-up view of Saturn's atmosphere shows a circular vortex surrounded by numerous attendant bright clouds. Some blurring due to spacecraft motion is apparent in this view. The image was ta...

Saturn's F ring shows several "mini-jets" near the upper-right of this image captured by the Cassini spacecraft. The A ring also appears in the lower-left of the image. The mini-jets are thought b...

This poster shows a flattened (Mercator) projection of the Huygens probe's view from 10 kilometers altitude (6 miles). The images that make up this view were taken on Jan. 14, 2005, with the descen...

+ Un-annotated version The constant change in Saturn’s wavy, wiggly F ring is on display in this set of images obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The images show a view looking directly down o...

This sequence of nine true-color, narrow-angle images shows the varying appearance of Jupiter as it rotated through more than a complete 360-degree turn. The smallest features seen in this sequen...

These color topographic views from NASA's Dawn spacecraft show variations in surface height around Ahuna Mons, a mysterious mountain on Ceres.

The low Sun elevation in this scene emphasizes the topography of Van Eyck crater.

Pan is nearly lost within Saturn's rings in this view that captures a small section of the rings from just above the ringplane. Pan (28 kilometers, or 17 miles across) appears a small bright dot o...

This global digital map of Saturn's moon Rhea was created using data taken during NASA's Cassini and Voyager spacecraft flybys. The map is an equidistant projection and has a scale of 700 meters (2...

The Cassini spacecraft peers down through layers of haze to glimpse the lakes of Titan's northern regions.

Although the embedded moon Pan is nowhere to be seen, there is a bright clump-like feature visible here, within the Encke Division. Also discernable are periodic brightness variations along the out...

An intricate, fingerprint-like pattern of dunes is seen in this dramatic radar image of Saturn's moon Titan captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on May 21, 2009 from an altitude of 965 kilomet...

This Cassini narrow-angle camera image -- one of those acquired in the survey conducted by the Cassini imaging science team of the geyser basin at the south pole of Enceladus -- was taken as Cassin...