Enceladus

Dec 20 2019

How the ice moon Enceladus got its tiger stripes

Saturn’s ice moon, Enceladus, is one of the most promising worlds in terms of the search for places where extraterrestrial life might exist. Of course, as a reader of the Ice Moon series, you’ve already known that for a long time. Near its south pole there are deep fissures in its crust, through which water is constantly being forced outward. This allows researchers to look under the ice, which is up to 100 kilometers thick, without having to drill through it. A new study tries to explain the unusual appearance of these sulci, which are also called “tiger stripes.”…

New organic molecules discovered on Saturn’s moon Enceladus

Two years ago, the Cassini probe was sent plummeting into Saturn to its fiery demise – but researchers are still finding new discoveries in the data it sent back. Now, scientists from the Free University Berlin have reported findings from the CDA, the “Cosmic Dust Analyzer,” which was on board Cassini. This instrument was developed in Germany and was designed to study very small particles. The CDA could detect particles with a velocity of 5 kilometers per second and a mass of only 1013 grams (a ten-millionth of a millionth of a gram, which corresponds to a size of two-thousands of…

Ice geysers also on Jupiter’s moon Europa

One of the special features of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, magnificently photographed and analyzed by the Cassini probe, are its geysers: close to its south pole, large fountains made from ice crystals burst from the ocean under the crust and leap into space. Like Enceladus, we know that Jupiter’s moon Europa is also an icy moon. Whether there are also geysers on Europa, however, is anything but clear. If there are geysers on Europa, this would be an advantage because then we could find out very simply what is in the ocean believed to be under Europa’s crust. Since Europa…