Friday, May 27, 2011

Enceladus looms

This is a picture of one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus. The white line at the bottom of the picture is sunlight pouring over Saturn's darkened surface. This light from the sun also lights only a small crescent of Saturns moon as well. This moon has a diameter of about 500 km. By looking at the illuminated part of the moon in this picture, one can see water vapor and ice being ejected from fissures along the surface.These fissures have used the nickname of "tiger stripes" for these fissures along it's surface. Astronomers refer to the ejections from the fissures as plumes. These ice plumes spewing from the surface could be evidence that there is water on the surface of Enceladus. This image was taken from the Cassini spacecraft, only 6,000 kilometers away from Enceladus (which was actually closer than Saturn is to it's moon).

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