But I thought I’d leave it here for y’all to soak up…
Enceladus: Home of alien life forms?
Enceladus is little bigger than a lump of rock and has appeared, until recently, as a mere pinprick of light in astronomers’ telescopes. Yet Saturn’s tiny moon has suddenly become a major attraction for scientists. Many now believe it offers the best hope we have of discovering life on another world inside our solar system.
Continued here
Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed “tiger stripes” near the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
This is Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn, and one of the most intriguing objects in the solar system. It was first discovered by the great William Herschel in 1789, and first visited by the Voyager probes in 1980, and 1981. This tiny little moon is small enough to fit comfortably within Great Britain, but receives a lot of attention from scientists. Enceladus’s surface is completely covered in a shell of water ice up to 40km thick, but no one knows exactly how thick it is. As Enceladus orbits Saturn, the planets gravity squeezes and deforms the moons core, sort of like kneading a ball of dough, and this produces heat within the moon. It is thought this heat is enough to melt a sub-surface ocean which makes this small moon a candidate to support life. The Cassini spacecraft has made numerous flybys of Enceladus and has discovered huge geysers erupting from it’s south pole. Samples show that these geysers are made of water with a similar salt content to Earth’s oceans. Water must be liquid for a salt content of that magnitude to occur. Organic compounds, the building blocks of life, were also discovered. Scientists consider Enceladus, along with Europa, a moon of Jupiter, to be the most likely places for life to exist outside of Earth. All of the pictures in this photoset were taken by the Cassini spacecraft
(via everythingsoffaisle9)
Enceladus in Saturnshine.
Ian Regan’s composite of the recent Enceladus flyby. Best yet image I have seen of Enceladus lit both by sunshine and light reflected off Saturn (aka Saturnshine).
Also the Gordan Ugarkovic image. Note the spewing geysers on the lower left.
(Raw image of Enceladus taken using RED and CL2 filters; Cassini Spacecraft;NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
(via throughascientificlens)
Jet Blue
Date: 27 Nov 2005
Cassini imaging scientists used views like this one to help them identify the source locations for individual jets spurting ice particles, water vapor and trace organic compounds from the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
Their study — published in the 11 October 2007, issue of the journal Nature — identifies eight source locations, all on the prominent tiger stripe fractures, or sulci, in the moon’s south polar region.
This false-color view was created by combining three clear filter images taken at nearly the same time as Fountains of Enceladus - Image 2. This image was then specially processed to enhance the individual jets that compose the plume. (Fountains of Enceladus - Image 2 was instead processed to reveal subtleties in the brightness of the overall plume that comprises the jets.) Some artifacts due to the processing are present in the image. The final product was colored blue for dramatic effect.
The Cassini spacecraft took this image of jets of water ice and vapour, mixed with organic compounds, over the south polar region of Saturn’s moon Enceladus
10 Moons Every Person Should Know
Pretty much everyone can rattle off the names of our solar system’s eight (formerly nine) planets, but ask the average person to list some moons and you’ll be lucky if they can tell you more than two or three.
Now, you obviously can’t expect people to remember the name of every single satellite in the solar system (after all, they outnumber the planets by around 20 to 1), but if you have even the slightest interest in astronomy, it wouldn’t kill you to be familiar with at least an even ten. So with that in mind, we’ve assembled this reference guide to ten of the solar system’s most noteworthy moons.
(via everythingsoffaisle9)
Enceladus might also be my favourite object in the sky. It’s basically a real life Hoth.
Also the water geysers that shoot into space!
Here’s to hoping Lake Vostok samples show the possibility Enceladus is shooting lifeforms into space. Maybe we weren’t the first in our solar system to travel into space.
So here is a real image taken by the Cassini probe last night. What you’re looking at are jets of water and ice spewing out of cracks on the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
These jets contain salty, icy particles as well as organic compounds. Cassini has been able to test the salinity of the vapour jets and has found the same salt content as in Earth’s oceans!
What is even more awesome is that there is a possibility that underneath its icy shell, Enceladus harbours life similar to that found in harsh conditions on Earth.
Read read read, its quite cool!
