Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturns Enceladus
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 that orbited
Saturn from 2004 to 2017.
Pictured here,
a high resolution image of
Enceladus is shown from a close flyby.
The unusual surface features dubbed
tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue.
Why
Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moon
Mimas,approximately the same size, appears
quite dead.
A recent
analysis of
ejected ice grains
has yielded evidence that complex organic molecules exist inside Enceladus.
These large carbon-rich
molecules
bolster -- but do not prove -- that oceans under Enceladus' surface could
contain life.
News:
Complex
Organics Bubble up from Ocean-world Enceladus
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
