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Baghdad Sulcus, Enceladus
Just after its near-south-polar flyby of Enceladus on November 21, 2009, Cassini snapped the four photos that were used to compose this mosaic image along Baghdad Sulcus, one of the four main "tiger stripes" that cross Enceladus' south pole.
At the end of the Baghdad Sulcus segment shown here, a distinct branching pattern of fractures can be seen forking away from the central rift. The main fissure and the branching rifts slice through a complex system of quasi-parallel, rope-like, rounded ridges each as large as a kilometer (half a mile) across and hundreds of meters (yards) in height. At scales of tens to hundreds of meters (tens to hundreds of yards), a fine network of small parallel cracks are pervasive, slicing through the valley walls of Baghdad as well as through the ropey ridges. Near the very top of the mosaic, the ropey terrain transitions to a distinctly different zone in which a complicated network of fractures subdivides a broad plain into complex polygonal patterns created by tectonics.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / blame any scale bar errors on Emily Lakdawalla