Jets of steam and icy grains erupt from deep fractures in the south polar terrain of Enceladus, making this tiny body one of only four places in the solar system known to have geologic activity in the present day. This artist's conception includes astronauts for scale.
Image: Ron Miller
In Brief
- On the Saturnian moon Enceladus, jets of powdery snow and water vapor, laden with organic compounds, vent from the “tiger stripes,” warm gashes in the surface. How can a body just over 500 kilometers across sustain such vigorous activity?
- The answer may be the presence of underground fluids, perhaps a sea, which would increase the efficiency of heating by tidal effects. Support for this idea has come from recent flybys.
- If Enceladus has liquid water, it joins Mars and Jupiter’s moon Europa as one of the prime places in the solar system to look for extraterrestrial life.
More In This Article
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Photo Album
Slide Show: Images from Cassini
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Overview
Video: Enceladus and Cassini
When the Voyager 2 spacecraft sped through the Saturnian system more than a quarter of a century ago, it came within 90,000 kilometers of the moon Enceladus. Over the course of a few hours, its cameras returned a handful of images that confounded planetary scientists for years. Even by the diverse standards of Saturn’s satellites, Enceladus was an outlier. Its icy surface was as white and bright as fresh snow, and whereas the other airless moons were heavily pocked with craters, Enceladus was mantled in places with extensive plains of smooth, uncratered terrain, a clear sign of past internally driven geologic activity. At just over 500 kilometers across, Enceladus seemed far too small to generate much heat on its own. Yet something unusual had clearly happened to this body to erase vast tracts of its cratering record so completely.
Voyager’s brief encounter allowed no more than a cursory look, and, in hindsight, its imaging coverage of Enceladus was terribly unfortunate: a few medium-resolution images of the northern hemisphere, some low-resolution coverage in the south, and none of the south pole. We had no idea what we had missed.
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9 Comments
Add CommentThis is a fascinating article on an amazing and surprising world by one of the world's finest scientific minds. What Cassini has found out at Saturn is truly astonishing and brings to mind so many questions about the presence of life in the Universe. Now we know that tidal heating forces could have as much to do with creating a habitable world as proximity of the world to it's parent star. With the discovery of so many new planetary systems containing gas giants, the possibilities are indeed endless. Bravo Carolyn Porco and Cassini!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere water exists, life is there also. This is in the Quran which declares the planets are inhabited; there is water, plant, animal and man on the planets.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://universeandquran.t35.com/index.htm#The_planets_Are_Inhabited_
eanassir.
http://universeandquran.t35.com
Very Interesting. I long for the day that we humans can move between planets and live on different ones to Earth. Of course, I might be long dead.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere may be some anticipated meeting between the people of Earth and the people of the planets (Mars is the most anticipated fro such a meeting.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuch meeting may be fruitful, with mutual exchange of knowledge of the people of both planets.
http://universeandquran.t35.com/new_page_2.htm#An_Anticipated_Meeting_
eanassir
http://universeandquran.t35.com
This is a wonderful site to see. Myself even as a little girl, I always wondered what's out their? Humans on Earth can't be the only living breathing things in this Universe? Living in Space will soon be an
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEverlasting Event just like living in the Sun.
Congradulations Dr Carolyn Porco ,it was a brilliant write-up, leads to Brain storming enlightenment--" The energy being injected into the body
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfalls short of the energy coming out of Encleadus south pole by a factor of
FIVE!! intelligently calculated sign of wisdom J Meyer & Jack W.
The energy can be injected by Celestial Bodies which are in Orbital Synchrony -----besides Encleadus and Dione there are other planets and moons, within our Solar system which fall in perfect Geometrical Angular
placement-------when measurements are made from the fixed precise point location on ENCLEADUS surface .( Natural CONVERGENCE)
Synchronised phase lock and orbital resonance is natures hidden properties on a Geometrized grid Locked, and can involve other Planets,moons ,celestial bodies --but ONLY from within our Solar System.
Yes i agree
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting.. Try to focus on much more details that dealing with space sciences which will be more useful for the students like me..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTheir size dimensions are completely OFF. I have re-rendered a dozen photos of Enceladus, and it's a very small moon, almost spacecraft-size. You don't want to believe me, that's fine. I don't apologize for my work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this