NASA’s Cassini mission has sent back this rather cool picture of Enceladus, taken as the space probe plunged through the plume of water erupting from the moon’s south pole yesterday.

“The spacecraft is going to approach within about 100 kilometres (62 miles) of the surface,” said mission scientist Bonnie Buratti before the fly-through. “We’ve been closer before (25 kilometres or 15 miles), but we’ve never plunged quite so deeply into the heart of the plume.”

[hat tip elakdawalla]

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute