Cassini Flyby of Enceladus

The spacecraft Cassini did a flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus five days ago, on March 12th. This flyby was unique in that Cassini flew by Enceladus at the height of a mere 50 kilometers (31 miles) above the surface of the moon. This particular video was made by Brent Buffington, who's a Cassini navigation team member. The animation shows Cassini preparing for the flyby and then shooting past the moon. As Cassini swings past Enceladus, the spacecraft rotates into various positions, allowing each instrument on board to take measurements. The left-hand window shows the field-of-view for the prime instrument, while the right-hand windows show the view from the different instrument boresights. The instruments include:

UVIS (Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph) - a long narrow magenta field of view

VIMS (Visible-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer) - a big red square

ISS (Imaging Subsystem; i.e., the visible light camera) - a white square; a small white square is the narrow angle camera, a large white square is the wide angle camera

CIRS (Composite Infrared Spectrometer) - a red circular field-of-view and two small red parallel narrow fields-of-views

HGA (High Gain Antenna; used for communicating with Earth)

Radar - a green circle, centered on the high gain antenna

The video can also be viewed at Youtube.

Credit: NASA