See pic: Cassini captures brighter surface of Saturn's moon 'Enceladus'

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

New Delhi: NASA's Cassini has returned some stunning images of the Saturn's two moons, Dione and Enceladus on Wednesday. Though the surface of these two moons are made up of nearly the same material but Enceladus has a considerably higher reflectivity than Dione.

Enceladus also appears more brighter in the distance than Dione against the dark night sky.

The surface of Enceladus endures a constant rain of ice grains from its south polar jets which is more like fresh, bright, snow while the surface of Dione looks older and weathered.

The image was taken on September 8, 2015 in visible light with Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) from Dione and the image scale is 1,600 feet (500 meters) per pixel. As the distance from Enceladus was 228,000 miles (364,000 kilometers) for an image scale of 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency.