Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturn's Enceladus
Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA
Posted on 06/28/2009 5:29:46 AM PDT by sig226
Explanation: Do underground oceans vent through the tiger stripes on Saturn's moon Enceladus? Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole and creating Saturn's mysterious E-ring. Evidence for this has come from the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. Pictured above, a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. The unusual surface features dubbed tiger stripes are visible on in false-color blue. Why Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moon Mimas, approximately the same size, appears quite dead. Most recently, an analysis of dust captured by Cassini found evidence for sodium as expected in a deep salty ocean. Conversely however, recent Earth-based observations of ice ejected by Enceladus into Saturn's E-Ring showed no evidence of the expected sodium. Such research is particularly interesting since such an ocean would be a candidate to contain life.
WOW!!
There’s some pretty cool stuff right here in our own solar system.
Makes me sad to think that the idiot chimp in the White House is going to make space missions, manned or unmanned, impossible for the entire current generation.
And the one after that and the one after that if he isn’t stopped now.
Sweet pic. It’s so nice to see.
Stunning!
so how thick must the ice be to retain the impact craters?
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