As the ice-encrusted moon Enceladus makes it way along its orbit around Saturn it gets repeatedly squeezed by the giant planet’s gravity, like a frozen stress ball with water-filled insides. This constant squeezing and relaxing generates friction heat in the moon’s crust, which could be responsible for keeping some of its internal water liquid and spraying…
Tag: jets
A Frozen Veil
A crescent-lit Enceladus ejects a frozen mist of water ice into space in this image, a combination of three raw files captured by the Cassini orbiter on September 22, 2010. At this high phase angle the jets become visible as the icy particles brightly reflect the sunlight passing almost directly through them towards Cassini’s lens….
A Cassini Composition
Cassini took this beautiful image of a crescent-lit Enceladus shadowed against Saturn’s silhouette during Friday’s flyby, demonstrating once again its uncanny ability to capture wonderfully-composed shots that illustrate the inherent beauty of our family of planets. Enceladus is the now-famous moon with “jet-power”…continually erupting geysers spray water ice out into space from long “tiger stripe”…
Ennie and the Jets
Another great image from the latest flyby of Enceladus by the Cassini spacecraft, this one shows three frigid plumes firing off into space from the moon’s south pole. More images from the flyby can be seen on my previous posts, or by going to the CICLOPS site listed in the sidebar. This last flyby…
Pieces of Flare
With Enceladus in the spotlight this week (see previous post) Cassini’s camera was trained on the icy moon and captured several images which seem to show its signature polar jets in action. Spliced together, these photos create an intriguing animation that, while not exactly clear as to what’s going on, is interesting to watch….
Once a Jet, Always a Jet
Cassini’s camera caught Enceladus in just the right light this past Saturday, backlit by the sun and showing off its signature icy jets. Emanating from fractures in its southern polar region, the jets are composed of water ices and hint at possible liquid water existing beneath its surface, kept liquid by heat from the…
Lights in the Dark 