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Explanation: Orbiting in the plane of Saturn's rings, Saturnian moons have a perpetual ringside view of the gas giant planet. Of course, while passing near the ring plane the Cassini spacecraft also shares their stunning perspective. The thin rings themselves slice across the middle of this Cassini snapshot from April 2011. The scene looks toward the dark night side of Saturn, in the frame at the left, and the still sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. Centered, over 1,500 kilometers across, Rhea is Saturn's second largest moon and is closest to the spacecraft, around 2.2 million...

Mars dominates the search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system, but a growing number of scientists believe Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn, is a much better betEnceladus 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. The idea that a moon a mere 310 miles in diameter, orbiting in deep, cold space, 1bn...

Explanation: This moon is shining by the light of its planet. Specifically, a large portion of Enceladus pictured above is illuminated primarily by sunlight first reflected from the planet Saturn. The result is that the normally snow-white moon appears in the gold color of Saturn's cloud tops. As most of the illumination comes from the image left, a labyrinth of ridges throws notable shadows just to the right of the image center, while the kilometer-deep canyon Labtayt Sulci is visible just below. The bright thin crescent on the far right is the only part of Enceladus directly lit by the...

[Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA] Explanation: A sunlit crescent of Saturn's moon Enceladus looms above the night side of Saturn in this dramatic image from the Cassini spacecraft. Captured on August 13, 2010 looking in a sunward direction during a flyby of the icy moon, the view also traces layers in the upper atmosphere of Saturn scattering sunlight along the planet's bright limb. Closer to the spacecraft than Saturn, Enceladus is a mere 60,000 kilometers from Cassini's camera. The south polar region of the 500 kilometer-diameter moon is illuminated, including plumes of water vapor and icy particles...

Since 2005, when the Cassini spacecraft first observed icy plumes spewing from the south pole of Enceladus (SN: 5/6/06, p. 282), researchers have speculated that an ocean may lie buried tens of kilometers beneath the moon's fractured, icy surface. Now, Cassini scientist Dennis Matson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and his colleagues propose adding a bit of effervescence to the watery hypothesis. Circulating, bubbly seawater containing 1 or 2 percent dissolved carbon dioxide and other gases could supply water, gas, dust and heat to Enceladus' polar plumes, the researchers say. It can also explain why some of...

I'm getting to be a broken record here, but I can't stop looking at these photos from the Enceladus flyby. This first one I put together from two of the south polar plume images – you can see all four of the tiger stripes, and the plumes issuing from them, in this wide shot. I mosaicked two images, matching their levels, rotated them 180 degrees to put "ground" at the bottom and "sky" at the top, and filled in a little of the background in the corner at lower right to fill out the whole image. Enceladan south polar vents...

In 2005, NASA's Cassini probe, orbiting Saturn, made a tantalizing discovery: Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, was venting something -- possibly liquid water -- into the airless space around it.

Astronomers looking at the spectacular supersonic plumes of gas and dust shooting off one of Saturn's moons say there are strong hints of liquid water, a key building block of life. Their research, appearing in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, adds to the growing push to explore further the moon Enceladus, as one of the solar system's most compelling places for potential life. Using images from NASA's Cassini probe, astronomers had already figured that the mysterious plumes shooting from Enceladus' icy terrain contain water vapor. New calculations suggesting the gas and dustspew at speeds faster-than-sound make the case for...

The exact location of jets on Saturn's geologically active moon Enceladus have been found -- a discovery scientists are calling a "mother lode." NASA's Cassini flyby mission released new photos this week of icy jets erupting from the surface. The green areas... are believed to represent deposits of coarser-grained ice and solid boulders. Some of the material is concentrated along valley floors and walls, as well as along the upraised flanks of the "tiger stripe" fractures. The photo also reveals a sinuous boundary of scarps and ridges that encircles the south polar terrain. Here, the ice may be blocky rubble...

What should follow the great success of Cassini-Huygens? The European and US space agencies are moving ahead on their next major missions to explore the Solar System. Nasa has begun choosing a destination for a "flagship" robotic venture along the lines of Cassini-Huygens, which has been exploring Saturn and its moons. It is considering four targets: the Jupiter system, Jupiter's moon Europa, and Saturn's moons Enceladus and Titan. The European Space Agency has called for proposals for one flagship mission and another medium-sized mission. Europa, Titan and Enceladus are also among the destinations expected to be proposed under the...

Step aside, Europa. Make way, Titan. Saturn's small moon Enceladus is becoming one of the hottest places to look for signs of life in the chilly outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft recently discovered that a giant plume of water vapor, dust, and small ice crystals shoots out from a crack-lined region in the southern hemisphere of this 500-kilometer-wide moon. Observations of the plume and surrounding material on the moon's surface suggest that Enceladus harbors the basic ingredients necessary for life as we know it.

BOULDER, Colorado—The discovery of apparent liquid water reservoirs erupting in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn’s moon Enceladus has produced a gusher of questions. One leading unknown to solve: Could liquid water residing within a body so small and so cold provide comfort-level conditions suitable for living organisms? NASA announced last month that high-resolution Cassini images of Enceladus show icy jets and lofty plumes that expel large quantities of particles at high speed. Scientists think the jets spout from near-surface pockets of liquid water, super-cold versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone.

The potential discovery of water on one of Saturn's moons would add a new environment in the solar system where life could exist, according to scientists. NASA's Cassini spacecraft made the surprising find on Enceladus during its mission around Saturn and the ringed planet's natural satellites. The probe may have found evidence of liquid water that erupts like geysers from Yellowstone park in the western United States, NASA said Thursday. "The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon," NASA said. "We realize that this is a radical conclusion -- that...

A masterpiece of deep time and wrenching gravity, the tortured surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus and its fascinating ongoing geologic activity tell the story of the ancient and present struggles of one tiny world. This is a story that is recounted by imaging scientists in a paper published in the journal Science on March 10, 2006.

NASA'S CASSINI DISCOVERS POTENTIAL LIQUID WATER ON ENCELADUS Thu Mar 09 2006 11:21:33 ET **Exclusive** [Press release set for 2 PM ET release] NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon. "We realize that this is a radical conclusion - that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo....

Cassini Images Reveal Spectacular Evidence Of An Active Moon Recent Cassini images of Saturn's moon Enceladus backlit by the sun show the fountain-like sources of the fine spray of material that towers over the south polar region. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 07, 2005Jets of fine, icy particles streaming from Saturn's moon Enceladus were captured in recent images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The images provide unambiguous visual evidence that the moon is geologically active. "For planetary explorers like us, there is little that can compare to the sighting of activity on another solar system body," said...

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- The international Cassini spacecraft has found visual evidence that Saturn's moon Enceladus is geologically active. Recent images taken by the spacecraft show streams of fine, icy particles rising from the moon's south pole, suggesting they originated from warm zones in the region. The discovery puts Enceladus in the class of geologically active moons with Jupiter's Io and Neptune's Triton. It's unclear what causes the geologic activity, but scientists think it's due to internal heating caused by radioactivity or tides. Cassini passed through the plume stretching up to 300 miles above Enceladus' surface in July. During...

Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus is "absolutely a highlight" of the Cassini mission and should be targeted in future searches for life, Robert H. Brown of The University of Arizona, leader of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team, said last week. Brown and other Cassini scientists attended a meeting in London last week and are at the 37th annual Division of Planetary Sciences meeting at Cambridge University this week. "Enceladus is without a doubt one of the most spectacular things Cassini has seen," Brown said in a phone interview Thursday. "It's one of the biggest puzzles. It'll be a...

The Cassini spacecraft has coasted to its closest encounter yet - skimming just 175 kilometres above Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. But astronomers are at a loss to explain its observations. On 14 July, Cassini swooped in for an unprecedented close-up view of the wrinkled moon. Its Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) camera has since returned pictures of a boulder-strewn landscape that is currently beyond explanation. The "boulders" appear to range between 10 and 20 metres in diameter in the highest-resolution images, which can resolve features just 4 m across. “That’s a surface texture I have never seen anywhere else in the...

Cassini Finds an Atmosphere on Saturn's Moon Enceladus March 16, 2005 (Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory) The Cassini spacecraft's two close flybys of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus have revealed that the moon has a significant atmosphere. Scientists, using Cassini's magnetometer instrument for their studies, say the source may be volcanism, geysers, or gases escaping from the surface or the interior. When Cassini had its first encounter with Enceladus on Feb. 17 at an altitude of 1,167 kilometers (725 miles), the magnetometer instrument saw a striking signature in the magnetic field. On March 9, Cassini approached to within 500 kilometers (310 miles)...