Tiger stripe on Enceladus. Linked image is explained in post. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Just days ago (Friday the 13th), the Cassini spacecraft did a flyby of the Saturn moon Enceladus and paid particular attention the “tiger stripes” that are apparent in the south polar regions.

We know the tiger stripes to be giant fissures spewing jets of water vapor and organic particles hundreds of kilometers (and miles) into space.

The southern hemisphere of Enceladus is going into winter darkness, fortunately Cassini has a composite infrared instrument so it can “see” heat.  It will be a while before temperature maps of the fissures will be generated from the data but you can bet they are working on them.

The image above was taken from 10,391 km (6,457 miles) and if you click it you can see a fissure relatively close up, only 2,673 km (1,661 miles).  I just love that picture, it looks COLD!  Both of the images are “raw” meaning they’ve had no processing.  Here is a larger image at the Cassini page.