Cassini Finds an Atmosphere on Saturn's Moon Enceladus

JPL/NASA/ESA ^ | 3/16/2005 | n/a

[Pyro7480]

Fascinating...

[Pyro7480]

Ping!

[Joe Brower]

[PatrickHenry]

Thanks for the ping, but this thread is better for the Space list, so I'm contacting KevinDavis. He keeps the Space Ping list.

[COBOL2Java]

During its very close flyby on March 9, 2005, the Cassini spacecraft captured this false-color view of Saturn's moon Enceladus, which shows the wide variety of this icy moon's geology.

Some geological regions on Enceladus are old and retain large numbers of impact craters; younger areas exhibit many generations of tectonic troughs and ridges. Subtle differences in color may indicate different ice properties, such as grain sizes, that will help unravel the sequence of geologic events leading to the current strange landscape.

This false-color view is a composite of individual frames obtained using filters sensitive to green (centered at 568 nanometers) and infrared light (two infrared filters, centered at 752 and 930 nanometers respectively). The view has been processed to accentuate subtle color differences. The atmosphere of Saturn forms the background of this scene (its color has been rendered grey to allow the moon to stand out).

The Sun illuminates Enceladus from the left, leaving part of it in shadow and blocking out part of the view of Saturn. This view shows the anti-Saturn hemisphere, centered nearly on the equator.

The images comprising this view were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 94,000 kilometers (58,000 miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 48 degrees. Resolution in the image is about 560 meters (1,800 feet) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

[mikrofon]

Enchiladas have been known to cause gases to escape from the interior...

[from occupied ga]

Enchiladas have been known to cause gases to escape from the interior...

And it didn't cost a couple of billions taxpayer dollars to determine this.

[Uncle Miltie]

Saturn's Moon Enceladus

Did someone say "Ensaladas?"

[Crazieman]

Enceladus is basically the biggest chunk of ice in the solar system.

Almost pure ice. Almost. A density around 1.13 g/cm3 if I remember right.

[Pyro7480]

I did a Google search, and I saw that the moon has an average density of 1.24 g/cm3. What is the average density of ice? Just under 1 g/cm3?

[Crazieman]

Ice is 0.92 g/cm3, liquid water is 1.00 g/cm3 (duh, its the standard :)

So its not quite pure ice - but moreso than say, Europa at 2.97 g/cm3

[Crazieman]

1.24 g/cm3? Thats light

Do you mean OUR moon? Its 3.34 g/cm3

[Pyro7480]

No, I meant Saturn's moon.

[Disambiguator]

Cassini Finds an Atmosphere on Saturn's Moon Enceladus

So, the lights were down and there was soft music playing?

[daku]

reportedly there is a funny smell coming from Uranis

[Dog]

Two Thirds built it bump.

[America's Resolve]

Bump for later

[InABunkerUnderSF]

An atmosphere is something that surrounds a planet and is held in place by gravity. This is more of a coma.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

An atmosphere is something that surrounds a planet and is held in place by gravity. This is more of a coma.

[MarshallDillon]

... the source may be volcanism, geysers, or gases escaping from the surface or the interior.

Whats my ex-wife doing up there?