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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Water Discovered on Enceladus...

Cassini has discovered water in Enceladus's atmosphere...

From Universe today:

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has made a surprising discovery about Saturn's moon Enceladus: it has an atmosphere of water vapor. Cassini detected the atmosphere during both of its recent close flybys. Scientists are sure what's causing this cloud of water vapour, but it could be caused by volcanoes, geysers, or gasses escaping from the moon's interior.

Enceladus' gravity is very small, so it wouldn't be able to hold onto an atmosphere for very long. This means there must be some continuous source replenishing it.

More here: www.universetoday.com/am/publish/enceladus_atmosphere.html?1732005

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The surface on Enceladus tell of two activities. You can see on one side that it's pockmarked with impact craters, but on the other, it's smooth. Looks like some natual terraforming going on.

I'm pretty sure we will find water in great abundance in our solar system and elsewhere.

And yes...even on Mars... ;D

[Maddad]

Enceladus is too far out from the Sun to have liquid water. It's ten times as far away as the Earth, so it should receive only a hundredth the solar radiation. It should be too cold for water. Why then is it there?

Io, one of Jupiters Galliean moons, is heated by a gravitational tug of war between itself, Jupiter, and one other moon (I forget which one). Each time the other moon swings close by, Io flexes. The flexing heats the moon, making it the most volcanically active object in the solar system.

I'm wondering if some similar process could explain why Enceladus is warmer than it should be.

[starbux]

In the case of Jupiter's Io, you are thinking of Ganymede. Europa is affected somewhat as well as Io, though not as much.

Perhaps Enceladus (enchiladas? ;D) is similarly affected by Saturn and Titan. Perhaps not a complete explanation but there is already too much unexplained weirdness like the topography of Iapetus. Looks like Korea already got there first.

[Maddad]

starbux said:

In the case of Jupiter's Io, you are thinking of Ganymede. Europa is affected somewhat as well as Io, though not as much.

No, I was thinking of Europa. Looked up the CD that came with my Earth Science course and listened again to an explanation of why Io flexes. Could be I think I was thiking. Maybe I only thought I was thinking. At least I think so.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Icy moon Enceladus source of mysterious hot spots

A researcher at Southwest Research Institute, working with scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center on data from the NASA Cassini Saturn orbiter, has found heat leaking out of the south polar region of Saturn's tiny icy moon, Enceladus. This find makes Enceladus only the third place in the solar system, after Earth and Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, where "hot spots" associated with ongoing geological activity have been detected.

The discovery was made with Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), which was built by and is operated from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., under the direction of Principal Investigator Michael Flasar. NASA announced the findings in a July 29 press release.

Enceladus has been a puzzle since the first pictures of it were taken by the Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s. It is only 500 kilometers (300 miles)in diameter -- so small that it ought to be cold and dead -- yet its surface is torn by innumerable fractures, indicating great geological violence in the relatively recent past. It is also the brightest moon in the solar system, with a surface that is almost pure white, and seems to be the source of a huge ring of dust, called the "E ring," that surrounds Saturn.

Though the pole, like Earth's poles, should have been one of the coldest places on Enceladus, at about 75° Kelvin (-324° Fahrenheit), Spencer's analysis of the data found that the south pole was instead the warmest place on the moon, with temperatures in small areas reaching well over 110° K (-261° F) -- so "warm" that these temperatures are difficult to explain by solar heating alone. More likely, heat is being generated inside Enceladus and is being released to the surface through fractures near the pole.

"Looking for signs of internal heat on Enceladus was always one of the goals of the CIRS instrument, but it always seemed like a long shot because we couldn't imagine that an object so tiny could produce enough heat to detect," said Spencer, a staff scientist in the SwRI Space Studies Department. "We are amazed that we were actually successful."

More here: www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=17531

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Someone left the Iron on I think...

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Ice Volcanoes Captured

November 30, 2005 | Finally astronomers have the photographic proof they've been looking for: ice volcanoes actively erupting on Enceladus. On November 27th the Cassini spacecraft looked back toward Saturn's icy moon and caught its profile backlit by sunlight. In those images, several discrete plumes tower above the 500-kilometer-wide satellite. The spray populates Saturn's E ring with water-ice particles that ultimately coat many of the planet's other satellites.
As expected from other Cassini observations, the eruptions stem from the moon's "tiger stripe" region, a zone in the southern hemisphere that is significantly warmer and geologically fresher than the icescapes to the north. Enceladus also sports a tenuous atmosphere over its southern half.

Story here: skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1631_1.asp
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I remember when it was strongly spoon-fed us that Earth was the only planet with active vulcanism. Then Voyager showed us Io with volcanic plumes...and now Enceladus. I'm sure it will be common phenomenon.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Liquid water on Saturn moon could support life

Scientists have found evidence that cold, Yellowstone-like geysers of water are issuing from a moon of Saturn called Enceladus, apparently fueled by liquid reservoirs that may lie just tens of yards beneath the moon's icy surface.

The surprising discovery, detailed in Friday's issue of the journal Science, could shoot Enceladus to the top of the list in the search for life elsewhere in our solar system. Scientists described it as the most important discovery in planetary science in a quarter-century.

The readings from Enceladus' geyser plumes indicate that all the prerequisites for life as we know it could exist beneath Enceladus' surface, Porco said.

"Living organisms require liquid water and organic materials, and we know we have both on Enceladus now," she said. "The plumes through which Cassini flew last July contain methane, contain CO2, propane — they contain several organic materials."

The third necessary ingredient — energy for fueling life's processes — could exist around hydrothermal vents around the bottom of Enceladus' water reservoirs, just as it does around Earth's deep-ocean hydrothermal vents.

Full story here from MSNBC: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11736311/

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This little world is full of surprises and I think would be a great place to land. Let's see what else Cassini uncovers.

I'm telling you, there's liquid water everywhere... #Thumbsup#

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Cassini probe may have found water on Saturn moon

The Cassini space probe may have found water on Saturn's Enceladus moon, NASA said. "NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt" like geysers in the United States' Yellowstone park, the US space agency said in a statement.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon.

"We previously knew of at most three places where active volcanism exists: Jupiter's moon Io, Earth, and possibly Neptune's moon Triton. Cassini changed all that, making Enceladus the latest member of this very exclusive club, and one of the most exciting places in the solar system," said Dr. John Spencer, Cassini scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo.

"Other moons in the solar system have liquid-water oceans covered by kilometers of icy crust," said Dr. Andrew Ingersoll, imaging team member and atmospheric scientist at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. "What's different here is that pockets of liquid water may be no more than tens of meters below the surface."

More here: www.physorg.com/news11591.html

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Water on Enceladus Prophesied in 1988

On the Bad Astronomer blog, a poster had this very interesting line from a book written in 1988...


This quote from the book HER NAME, TITANIC by Charles Pellegrino (1988), in the context of a conversation with Dr. Robert Ballard about frontiers and oceans:

PELLEGRINO: “We’re almost certain that Saturn’s moon Enceladus has an ocean of liquid water under the ice, and probably Jupiter’s Europa.”

The dust jacket blurb says in the late 1970s, Pellegrino and Dr. Jesse Stoff “produced the original models that predicted the discovery of oceans inside the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.”

So this has been suspected for a while…?

Source: www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/03/09/a-huge-nasa-announcement-today/

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I wonder where this idea of liquid water existing in the bitter cold of the Saturnian neighborhood came from?... #wha#

I think that this an incredible and amazing developement...and you know if there is "liquid" water on Enceladus, and theories of liquid water under the Ice on Europa....you gotta know there is liquid water on Mars.

What is happening to the water once it's shot out of the geyser? Does it fall back onto the surface as freeze dried snow and ice?

Wow...I say!... #drool#

[Rocketman]

Top notch neato-neat stuff Joe :-)

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Simple organic material Detected?

From CICLOPS:

Our detailed analyses of these images have led us to a remarkable conclusion, documented in a paper to be published in the journal SCIENCE tomorrow, that the jets are erupting from pockets of liquid water, possibly as close to the surface as ten meters ... a surprising circumstance for a body so small and cold. Other Cassini instruments have found that the fractures on the surface and the plume itself contain simple organic materials, and that there is more heat on average emerging from the south polar terrain, per square meter, than from the Earth.

Source: ciclops.org/index.php?flash=1

And check out NASA's site for this remarkable developement: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html

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Organics eh? Spewing organic compounds into space sounds a lot like panspermia to me.

This is all great stuff of science!... ;D

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Enceladus Exhales Water Ice Into Saturn Orbit

Pasadena CA (SPX) Sep 06, 2006
Enceladus continues to exhale water ice into Saturn orbit, keeping the E ring topped off with tiny particles. Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) is a source of much interest for planetary scientists, being nearly seven times smaller than Earth's own moongeology

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 11, 2006 at a distance of approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 164 degrees. Image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel.

Source: www.saturndaily.com/reports/Enceladus_Exhales_Water_Ice_Into_Saturn_Orbit_999.html

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A nice cool glass of Enceladus water would be good right about now... ;D