Astronomers at the European Space Agency have released a new view of the Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus.
This color view of Enceladus was taken by Cassini spacecraft on 31 January 2011, from a distance of 50,330 miles (NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / G. Ugarković)
Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn with a diameter of 314 miles (505 km), was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel.
In recent decades it has become a major attraction for researchers, with many believing it offers the best hope we have of discovering extraterrestrial life in our Solar System.
Because Enceladus reflects almost 100 percent of the sunlight that strikes it, the surface temperature is extremely cold, about minus 330 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 201 C degrees).
The icy moon displays at least five different types of terrain. Parts of Enceladus show craters no larger than 22 miles (35 km) in diameter. Other areas show regions with no craters, indicating major resurfacing events in the geologically recent past. There are fissures, plains, corrugated terrain and other crustal deformations. All of this indicates that the interior of Enceladus may be liquid today.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn since July 2004. This face-on color view of Enceladus was taken by the spacecraft on 31 January 2011, from a distance of 50,330 miles, and processed by amateur astronomer Gordan Ugarković.
Saturn’s imposing gravitational pull massages the moon’s icy shell, buckling it into ridges that tower over deep fractures.
The cavernous scar towards the south, which may plunge to depths of more than a half-mile, cuts across other features, indicating its relative youth. By contrast, the cratered region to the north, which is split in two by a vast swath of grooved terrain, hints at a much older surface that has so far escaped the resurfacing experienced elsewhere.
Enceladus is a moon bursting at the seams: along the southern hemisphere, plumes of ice particles mixed with water vapor, salts and organic material jet from fissures nicknamed ‘tiger stripes’. Some of the plumes pump their spray into space at speeds of over 1,200 mph (2,000 km/h), injecting particles into Saturn’s E-ring. The chemistry of the plumes suggests that there may be a liquid ocean hidden beneath the moon’s surface that could provide a suitable habitat for life.
A thin crescent of Enceladus is illuminated by incident sunlight coming from the right hand side of this frame, including sunlight that has been reflected by Saturn onto the moon.
