Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturn's Enceladus
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 now orbiting
Saturn.
Pictured above,
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.
Most recently, an
analysis of dust captured by
Cassini found evidence for sodium as expected in a deep salty ocean.
Conversely however, recent Earth-based observations of ice ejected by Enceladus into Saturn's E-Ring showed no
evidence of the expected
sodium.
Such research is particularly interesting since such an ocean would be a candidate to
contain life.