Flying toward Enceladus' plumes (animation)

This is an animation of nine clear-filter images captured by Cassini as it approached for its super-close flyby of Enceladus on April 4, 2012.  Cassini captured them at distances ranging from 316,299 down to 138,708 kilometers from Enceladus. (There were actually five times as many images captured, total; Cassini was cycling through six different filters.)  To compose the animation, the images were aligned on the gap between the two main sets of plumes; the Photoshop dust-and-scratches filter was used to eliminate lots of cosmic ray hits.