Saturn's Moon Enceladus Has A Sea Of Water The Size Of Lake Superior

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

A view of Saturn's fourth-largest moon, Enceladus, as seen from the Cassini spacecraft. Credit NASA

A Moon of Saturn Has A Sea, Scientists Say -- New York Times

Inside a moon of Saturn, beneath its icy veneer and above its rocky core, is a sea of water the size of Lake Superior, scientists announced on Thursday.

The findings, published in the journal Science, confirm what planetary scientists have suspected about the moon, Enceladus, ever since they were astonished in 2005 by photographs showing geysers of ice crystals shooting out of its south pole.

“What we’ve done is put forth a strong case for an ocean,” said David J. Stevenson, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology and an author of the Science paper.

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More News On Reports That Saturn's Moon Enceladus Has A Sea Of Water The Size Of Lake Superior

Saturn Moon Harbors Ocean, Raising Possibility of Life -- National Geographic
Liquid Ocean Sloshes under Saturn Moon’s Icy Crust, Cassini Evidence Shows -- Scientific America
Underground Ocean Makes Enceladus A Top Candidate For Extraterrestrial Life -- Science/Wired
Ocean as Large as Lake Superior Found on Enceladus, a Tiny Moon Orbiting Saturn -- Newsweek
NASA Cassini spacecraft finds sign of subsurface sea on Saturn’s moon Enceladus -- Washington Post

Cassini Spacecraft Captures Striking Images Of Three Saturn Moons

The jets emanate from hot fissures known as "tiger stripes" at the south pole

Cassini Spacecraft Captures Saturn Moon Geyser Images -- BBC

The Cassini spacecraft has captured striking images from flying by three moons of Saturn, including new pictures of Enceladus's gushing geysers.

Cassini made its lowest pass yet over the south pole of Enceladus, at at an altitude of 74km (46 miles).

This allowed it to "taste" the jets of water vapour and ice that the moon spews forth into space.

The Nasa probe also made relatively close flypasts of two other Saturnian satellites: Dione and Janus.

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My Comment: The pics are awesome.

Moonrise Over Saturn

The 'smoky' effect at the bottom of the crescent moon Enceladus are geyser-like jets that create a halo of ice, dust and gas around Enceladus that helps feed Saturn's E ring

Moonrise Over Saturn: Nasa Orbiter Captures Geysers Of Frost Shrouding South Pole Of Icy Moon Enceladus -- Daily Mail

Nasa's Cassini spacecraft has captured a spectacular view of the crescent moon Enceladus in front off the planet.

The orbiter captured the famous jets of water ice spraying from Saturn's moon Enceladus in a recent visible-light image - visible as a very faint smoky halo of ice shrouding the moon's south pole.

The spacecraft has orbited the planet Saturn since 2004, studying the planet, its mysterious moons, and its rings of tiny particles of ice.

The geyser-like jets on Enceladus appear as a small white blur below the dark south pole, down and to the right of the illuminated part of the moon's surface in the image.

The jets are made of water ice - and hint that Enceladus could have oceans below its surface.

The geyser-like jets create a halo of ice, dust and gas around Enceladus that helps feed Saturn's E ring.

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A Lightning Show On Saturn

Detailed views ... Saturn's great white spot. Photo: AP/NASA

Saturn Puts On Spectacular Lightning Show -- Brisbane Times

LOS ANGELES: Saturn's Great White Spot, a recurring storm that has intrigued scientists since it was first observed in 1876, is a windy, towering cloud of ammonia and water spewing out super bolts of lightning.

Now astronomers and NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, have captured the most detailed views to date of the phenomenon.

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Massive Storm On Saturn

This false-color infrared image shows clouds of large ammonia ice particles dredged up by the powerful storm. Credit: Cassini

Massive Storm Erupts On Saturn -- Cosmos

MARYLAND: A giant early-spring storm in Saturn's northern hemisphere - so powerful that it stretches around the entire planet - has been detected.

The rare storm has been wreaking havoc for months and shooting plumes of gas high into the planet's atmosphere, according to data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft and a European Southern Observatory ground-based telescope, that have been tracking its progress

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My Comment: Hmmmm ..... I guess I should not complain about the weather that I must go through each winter (I live in Quebec, Canada).

Giant Moon Collision 'May Have Formed Saturn's Rings'

Saturn's rings are largely made up of icy chunks

From The BBC:

Saturn's rings may have formed when a large moon with an icy mantle and rocky core spiralled into the nascent planet.

A US scientist has suggested that the tidal forces ripped off some of the moon's mantle before the actual impact.

The theory could shed light on the rings' mainly water-ice composition that has puzzled researchers for decades.

The scientist announced her idea at a conference in Pasadena, US.

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Aurora Saturnalis: Halos At The Poles Of The Ringed Planet

From New Scientist:

Saturn was already the solar system's undisputed lord of the rings. Now newly processed images from the Cassini spacecraft are revealing previously unseen halos of infrared auroral light above the planet's poles.

Auroras on Saturn form like those on Earth, when charged particles in the solar wind stream down the planet's magnetic field towards its poles, where they excite gas in the upper atmosphere to glow. Some auroras on the ringed planet are also triggered when some of its moons, which are electrically conducting, move through the charged gas surrounding Saturn.

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The Water Of Life: A Small World With Huge Potential

Frozen assets: icy geysers from the south polar region of Enceladus. AFP / Getty Images

From The Independent:

In the icy oceans of Enceladus, one of Saturn's tiny moons, scientists believe that there is proof that aliens exist. So why are there no plans to return to this mysterious miniature world?

In the future, swooping low over a lonely ice-moon of distant Saturn, an unmanned spacecraft will manoeuvre carefully, for it will be in a fragile orbit around a small world of feeble gravity.

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A Saturn Spectacular, With Gravity’s Help

SEVEN MORE YEARS Brent Buffington, from left, David Seal and John C. Smith arranged models of Jupiter and Saturn in a viewing room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Robert Benson for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

When it comes to voyages of discovery, NASA’s venerable Cassini mission is about as good as it gets.

In six years of cruising around the planet Saturn and its neighborhood, the Cassini spacecraft has discovered two new Saturn rings, a bunch of new moons and a whole new class of moonlets. It encountered liquid lakes on the moon Titan, water ice and a particle plume on the moon Enceladus, ridges and ripples on the rings, and cyclones at Saturn’s poles. Cassini also released a European space probe that landed on Titan. And Cassini has sent back enough data to produce more than 1,400 scientific papers — at last count.

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Enceladus: Nasa Spacecraft Records Dramatic Pictures Of Saturn's Moon 'Spitting'

This mosaic was created from two high-resolution images that were captured by the narrow-angle camera. Photo: NASA/JPL/SSI

From The Telegraph:

Dramatic pictures captured by a Nasa spacecraft of Saturn's icy moon, Enceladus, “spitting” out water have left scientists astounded.

The space agency’s Cassini spacecraft fly-by has captured new evidence that Saturn's sixth-largest moon is “bursting at the seams”.

The pictures, taken about 1,000 miles from the moon's surface, a forest of more than 30 individual icy plumes of water – including 20 that have never been recorded – can be seen erupting, or “spitting”, from fractures around its southern pole surface.

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Hubble Telescope Captures Saturn's Eerie Twin Aurorae

Astronomers had a rare chance to view Saturn with its rings edge on. It meant they could study the planet's Northern and Southern lights

From The Daily Mail:

A spectacular light show on Saturn has been captured in unique new photos of the ringed planet.

The aurora images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) were made possible by a rare chance to see the planet with its rings edge-on and both poles in view.

It takes Saturn almost 30 years to orbit the Sun, and during that time such a picture opportunity occurs only twice.

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Saturn’s Most Habitable Moon Offers Ice, Water, Killer Views

From Wired Science:

Enceladus has to be one of the most intriguing objects in the solar system. It’s definitely our favorite of Saturn’s 62 moons here at Wired Science, and it’s among the most likely places to find the necessary ingredients for extraterrestrial life in the solar system.

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Enceladus: Nasa Discovers New Evidence That Saturn Moon 'May Contain Life'

Saturn's icy Moons visible here, from left to right are: Janus, Enceladus and Epimetheus captured by the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera Photo: REX

From The Telegraph:

New evidence that liquid water lies beneath the surface on the Saturn moonof Enceladus has been discovered by Nasa scientists, suggesting that life may exist.

Nasa's Cassini spacecraft flew through icy plumes created by ice volcanoes and detected negatively charged water molecules, in a clear sign an underground sea exists.

On Earth this short-lived type of ion is produced where water is moving, such as in waterfalls or crashing ocean waves.

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Saturn Mission 'Extended Again'

Cassini completed its initial four year mission to explore Saturn in June 2008.

From The BBC:

The US space agency (Nasa) has extended the international Cassini-Huygens mission once again.

The unmanned Cassini-Huygens probe arrived at Saturn in 2004 on a mission that was meant to come to end in 2008.

The mission had already been extended by two years; potentially, the Cassini spacecraft could now explore the Saturn system until 2017.

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The Sound of Saturn's Rings

From Universe Today:

This wonderful video was posted by Jennifer Ouellette on Discovery News, and I just had to share it. The sounds are actual recordings picked up by the Cassini spacecraft. I have heard the eerie audio before, but never had previously seen it paired up with moving images from the mission. The radio emissions, called Saturn kilometric radiation, are generated along with Saturn's auroras, or northern and southern lights. Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument takes high-resolution measurements that allow scientists to convert the radio waves into audio recordings by shifting the frequencies down into the audio frequency range.

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Titan: A Climate Out Of This World

Titan in Saturn’s system: Titan (top) emerges from behind its parent planet, Saturn. Another satellite, Tethys, is visible at the bottom left of the picture. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

From Live Science:

Our knowledge of Titan has improved considerably over the last five years. Before that, Saturn's largest satellite had only been hastily approached by a handful of space probes.

In 1980, the Voyager-1 spacecraft took advantage of a flyby to take a few mysterious, yet frustrating close-ups of Titan's opaque, rusty atmosphere. Despite its color, Titan actually seemed to look a lot like the early Earth.

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Cassini Spacecraft Snaps Highest-Res Images of Saturn's Enceladus Moon

'Tiger Stripe' Terrain Cassini/CICLOPS

From Popular Science:

On Saturday, the Cassini spacecraft conducted a flyby of Saturn's sixth-largest moon, Enceladus, snapping some rather breathtaking photos along the way. The flyby, whose purpose was to gather the highest-resolution photos ever of the moon's southern polar region and to thermally map the "tiger stripe" terrain there, gathered some stunning images including some of the geyser-like plumes Cassini discovered on the moon's surface during previous flybys.

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Video: Saturn’s Spectacular Aurora in Action

From Wired Science:

How can you not love Cassini? The latest treat NASA’s spacecraft has provided us is the first ever movie of Saturn’s incredible aruroras.

The high-resolution video was assembled from 472 still images, spaced over 81 hours in October, that show the phenomenon in three dimensions. The lights can be seen as a rippling, vertical sheet up to 750 miles high above Saturn’s northern hemisphere.

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Awesome Pictures Of Saturn

From 20 degrees above the ring plane, Cassini's wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings, and a few of its moons a day and a half after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun's disk was exactly overhead at the planet's equator. The images were taken on Aug. 12, 2009, at a distance of approximately 847,000 km (526,000 mi) from Saturn. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

Saturn At Equinox -- Boston.com

Checking in with NASA's Cassini spacecraft, our current emissary to Saturn, some 1.5 billion kilometers (932 million miles) distant from Earth, we find it recently gathering images of the Saturnian system at equinox. During the equinox, the sunlight casts long shadows across Saturn's rings, highlighting previously known phenomena and revealing a few never-before seen images. Cassini continues to orbit Saturn, part of its extended Equinox Mission, funded through through September 2010. A proposal for a further extension is under consideration, one that would keep Cassini in orbit until 2017, ending with a spectacular series of orbits inside the rings followed by a suicide plunge into Saturn on Sept. 15, 2017. (previously: 1, 2, 3). (23 photos total)

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Tiny Moon Feeds Largest Ring Around Saturn

This artist's illustration shows a nearly invisible ring around Saturn – the largest of the giant planet's many rings. It was discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Keck

From The Cosmos:

PARIS: Stunned astronomers have discovered a new mega-ring around Saturn and believe its genesis is a small, distant moon.

Phoebe, a Saturnian satellite measuring only 214 km across, probably provides the record-breaking tenuous circle of dusty and icy debris, they report today in the British journal Nature.

The largest ring identified so far in the Solar System, the circle starts about six million km from Saturn and extends outwardly by another 12 million km, within the orbit of Phoebe.

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