In about 6 hours from now, Cassini will fly closely by Enceladus. We should be able to see some unprecidented detail of the surface of this moon, and perhaps get some better sense of what causes this tiny object to have an atmosphere.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Excellent! I'm on vacation all next week so I'll have time to follow this one closely. The atmosphere and possible internal dynamics of Enceladus are what I'm most interested in, and, of course, there's nothing like seeing a new view of unprecedented resolution of any object in our universe.

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...and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere; and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys...

Im really looking forward to these images as this is an extremely close encounter with this icy moon. Todays encounter was to have been at an altitude of 1,000km (620 miles), but the mission team has become so intrigued by the moon that a decision was taken to lower the height of the pass to a mere (109 miles) from the surface, which is Cassini's lowest altitude flyby of any object. We should be in for some excellent images and new discoveries.

Well, the Fly-by should have happened a while ago. If you see some images, please post the links to them here.

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Forming opinions as we speak

There's a long delay between Cassini transmitting data and Earth receiving it due to distance, and I never saw any details on when Cassini would transmit the flyby data. Then there's the processing time. Any ideas on a timeline?

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...and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere; and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys...

No, I don't even know if the listed fly-by time was the actual fly-by, or already corrected for the speed of light transmission time to the Earth. There is no time listed on the websites I've looked at for a press conference, so I guess the images will just be there eventually.

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Still no reports or images on the official Cassini web-site. I guess they didn't think of this as a crowd-pleaser, and didn't supply the staff to make the images rapidly available. I'm still looking forward to seeing them.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Maybe they got good shots, but forgot to take the lens cap off.

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~ cogito cogito ergo cogito sum ~

Nothing in life is good nor bad; thinking makes it so.

The raw images site has this description of their most recent image:
So, they simply haven't downloaded the images from the fly-by. I guess there's no hurry, or the most interested parties have other things on their plates.

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I thought we were the most interested parties! And the only thing better that I have to do is work and read The Half Blood Prince (tomorrow when I finally get my hands on it!)

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...and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere; and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys...

The images are starting to come in. Nice detail. I haven't started thinking about what they imply.
This one is from 199 miles up, (oblique angle), and 70 meters per pixel resolution.
I'm curious about the little hill with nubs on the top at the very bottom center of this image.

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Forming opinions as we speak

On a planet having erosive forces like wind and water, I'd say it was an igneous intrusion, like a butte. In the absence of weather, who knows? Perhaps the material surrounding the intrusions is weak enough to slump. OK, that's pretty weak, in microgravity. Great picture, tho! S

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Ignoramus et ignorabamus.-- Reymond

Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen.--Hilbert

Pick one.

You can find some more images here: CICLOPS