* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Enceladus

Blobrana · L

Evidence is mounting that Saturn's moon Enceladus has water somewhere beneath its frozen surface, analysis of recent flybys by the Cassini spacecraft shows.

"It's virtually impossible that we don't have liquid water some place in the body" - Carolyn Porco, the head of Cassini's imaging team at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

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Blobrana · L

Comet Impact Triggered Saturn Moon's Huge Jets?
A comet impact millions of years ago may have helped set in motion the events that created the huge geyser-like jets on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, scientists said yesterday.
The finding came from photos taken on recent flybys of the moon by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

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Blobrana · L

Enceladus has 'spreading surface'
A US space agency (Nasa) probe has witnessed a moon of Saturn do something very unusual and Earth-like.
Pictures of the icy satellite Enceladus suggest its surface splits and spreads apart - just like the ocean floor on our planet splits to create new crust.
The information was released at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

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Blobrana · L

The closer scientists look at Saturn's small moon Enceladus, the more they find evidence of an active world. The most recent flybys of Enceladus made by NASA's Cassini spacecraft have provided new signs of ongoing changes on and around the moon. The latest high-resolution images of Enceladus show signs that the south polar surface changes over time.
Close views of the southern polar region, where jets of water vapour and icy particles spew from vents within the moon's distinctive "tiger stripe" fractures, provide surprising evidence of Earth-like tectonics. They yield new insight into what may be happening within the fractures. The latest data on the plume -- the huge cloud of vapour and particles fed by the jets that extend into space -- show it varies over time and has a far-reaching effect on Saturn's magnetosphere.

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Blobrana · L

Enceladus Jets: Are They Wet or Just Wild?
Scientists continue to search for the cause of the geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The geysers are visible as a large plume of water vapour and ice particles escaping the moon. Inside the plume are jets of dust and gas. What causes and controls the jets is a mystery. The Cassini spacecraft continues to collect new data to look for clues.
At the heart of the search is the question of whether the jets originate from an underground source of liquid water. Some theories offer models where the jets could be caused by mechanisms that do not require liquid water. Painstaking detective work by Cassini scientists is testing the possibilities to get closer to an answer.
What generates Enceladus' jets is a burning question in planetary science, because if liquid water is involved, Enceladus would be shown to have everything it needs, in theory, to provide a habitable environment.
One recent model offered the possibility that the jets could be violent bursts of volatile ices freshly exposed to space when Saturn's tidal forces would open vents inside the "tiger stripe" region of the moon's south pole.

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Blobrana · L

Scientists at Jet Propulsion Lab in California, the University of Colorado and the University of Central Florida in Orlando teamed up to analyse the plumes of water vapour and ice particles spewing from the moon. They used data collected by the Cassini spacecraft's Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS). Cassini was launched from the Kennedy Space Centre in 1997 and has been orbiting Saturn since July 2004.
The team, including UCF Assistant Professor Joshua Colwell, found that the source of plumes may be vents on the moon that channel water vapour from a warm, probably liquid source to the surface at supersonic speeds.
The team's findings are reported in the Nov. 27 issue of the journal Nature.

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Blobrana · L

This image of Enceladus was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 9, 2008 at a distance of approximately 38,000 kilometres and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 73 degrees.
Image scale is 228 metres per pixel.

Expand (140kb, 1020 x 1020)
Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Blobrana · L

I'm very happy to report that we've just put one more major milestone in this remarkable adventure successfully behind us.

Enceladus

Another bold dip over the south pole of Enceladus and another skillful setup for imaging the moon 'on the fly' have brought us another bounty of positively glorious views of one of the most fabulous places in the solar system.