New pictures taken by the Cassini Spacecraft of Saturn's moon Enceladus have revealed stunning new features of the moon's surface. The images display the so-called "tiger stripes" that span the south pole, and reveal the features to be V-shaped cracks a thousand feet deep. Seen for the first time are the sources of active jets inside the features, which are hurling plumes of ice particles high into space.

Imaging scientists believe this activity may be due by hot vapor rising from underground, possibly being driven by a source of heat warm enough to maintain liquid water under the surface.

The images were taken on an August 11 flyby of the moon.

The jets include small amounts of organic chemicals along with the ice. The area around the tiger stripes is littered with icy fallout, from particles the size of dust all the way up to blocks of ice larger than a house. The pattern of the fallout reveals the jets have been very slowly moving along the tiger stripes.

Cassini passed Enceladus at a velocity of 40,000 MPH. The high speeds involved required the project team to develop a new "skeet shoot" method of photo taking to pinpoint the area in question.

According to the imaging team responsible, "The challenge is equivalent to trying to capture a sharp, unsmeared picture of a roadside billboard a mile away with a telephoto lens held out the window of a speeding car."

Enceladus is one of the brightest objects in the solar system, with surface ice reflecting nearly 100% of the sunlight that strikes it. It is one seventh the size of the Earth's moon. Two more flybys of the moon are planned. More images from the mission can be seen at www.ciclops.org

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency to study Saturn and its moons. It was launched in 1997 and reached Saturn in 2004.