Rev 61 Enceladus (March 12 2008) Options

[Holder of the Tw...]

The mission description PDF is now online.

Enceladus 3 Flyby

[CosmicRocker]

Can one of you astrobiololgy or icy body chemical types comment? I read the headlines noting the discovery of "complex organics," but the published spectrograph displays the heaviest broad peak centering around 40 Daltons. I wouldn't normally describe molecules of this weight range as "complex."

Are molecules heavier than the C2/CN/CO range typically considered complex by space scientists?

I noted that Emily's blog entry stated that "At higher masses, not shown on the graph above, "we saw more complex compounds, like propyne, propane, maybe even acetonitrile, and then we saw things even more complex. But they were so weak in signal that we didn't venture an identification." Propane and propyne should have appeared on that graph, since its X-axis goes up to 50 Daltons. Was that data simply erased from the publically released spectrograph?