Icy Satellites Cartography: First Results after 18 months in Orbit

Abstract

The Cassini spacecraft started to investigate the Saturnian icy satellites in June 2004 with the flyby of Phoebe. This flyby was followed by flybys of all medium sized Icy satellites except Mimas. The images taken by the Cassini orbiter camera during these flybys together with more distant observations allow the compilation of high resolution image mosaics. These data can also be used to calculate new global mosaics (e.g. Enceladus) or to improve the existing global mosaics based on Voyager data (e.g. for Iapetus). These global mosaics can be used both for scientific interpretation and for the planning of further flybys later in the tour. Furthermore, these global mosaics can be extended to cartographic standard products. We will show in this presentation both examples of new mosaics and cartographic products and will demonstrate how the mosaics can be used for further planning work.