It is a stark picture that illustrates the beauty and the blackness of space.
This is a picture of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus as it orbits the ringed planet. At the bottom of the moon you can see where ice is spewing from its surface at its southern pole.
The trail of ice it leaves behind in its wake has become the faint E ring of Saturn and this can faintly be seen, cutting a swathe across the centre of the image.
ICY MOON ENCELADUS LEAVES A TRAIL OF ICE IN ITS WAKE AS IT ORBITS SATURN IN THIS STUNNING PICTURE
The most brightly lit terrain seen on the moon here is illuminated by the Sun while light reflected off Saturn covers a larger area on the opposite side of the moon on the right.
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SATURN'S BIGGEST AND BRIGHTEST MOONS CASSINI IMAGE. TITAN IS SATURN'S LARGEST MOON AND APPEARS AT THE LOWER LEFT. RHEA IS THE PLANET'S SECOND LARGEST MOON AND IS SEEN IN THE CENTRE. ENCELADUS (CIRCLED) IS JUST ABOVE THE RINGS TO THE RIGHT. (Enlarge)
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 26th, 2010.
Cassini was flying around 617,000 miles from Enceladus when it took the picture.
Enceladus is one of the most fascinating objects in the solar system for scientists. Many believe that the moon could hide an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface, which would make it a prime candidate for some form of life within our own solar system.
Experts have analysed data from the Cassini spacecraft, which dived through the moon's water ice plume in 2008.
It revealed negatively charged water ions, which provide evidence for the presence of liquid water.
Enceladus joins a select group including Earth, Titan and comets, as the only places where negatively charged ions are known to exist in our solar system.
Negative oxygen ions were discovered in Earth's ionosphere at the dawn of the space age.
At Earth's surface, negative water ions are present where liquid water is in motion, such as waterfalls or crashing ocean waves.
Dr Frank Postberg, of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, studied data from Cassini's cosmic dust collector and discovered it had picked up salty grains of ice from the geyser.
Their presence is powerful evidence of salty lakes, reservoirs or seas within Enceladus.
The findings raise the prospect that alien fish and other marine life might have evolved there.
Enceladus is one of only three moons in the Solar System that generate eruptions of vapour and dust.
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