Enceladus Jet Sources |
Enceladus Jet Sources |
Oct 10 2007, 05:20 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3648 Joined: 1-October 05 From: Croatia Member No.: 523 |
New press release by the imaging team:
Cassini Pinpoints Hot Sources of Jets on Enceladus October 10, 2007 (Source: Space Science Institute) CICLOPS link to the release here. One thing I was curious about tiger stripe naming - why didn't they switch "Baghdad" and "Cairo" so we have a nice A,B,C,D progression? I can only imagine it was done on purpose, but why? -------------------- |
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Jun 24 2009, 05:57 PM
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2785 Joined: 10-November 06 From: Pasadena, CA Member No.: 1345 |
New article in Nature according to recent space.com article. Looks like there is evidence for a large body of salty water deep in Enceladus, but that the jets are fueled by slow evaporation deep underground.
The evidence for sodium salts is indirect, coming from E ring dust particles rather than Enceladus jets. (Quoi?) So more like a humidifier in the corner rather than "Cold Faithful". QUOTE Now, evidence points precisely to such a salty body of water. The results come from data collected by the Cosmic Dust Analyzer instrument aboard Cassini, which showed sodium salts within ice grains of Saturn's E ring. The composition of different sodium compounds and overall salt levels correspond with what the scientists would expect if there were an ocean beneath the moon's icy shell. "If you have liquid water in contact with a rocky core, then salts would be the most abundant dissolved compounds," Postberg told SPACE.com. "The only way to get that much salt into water is to extract it from rock." QUOTE In another study published in the June 25 issue of Nature, researchers report results from ground-based observations of the vapor cloud in Saturn's E ring, rather than the ice grains. These observations didn't show any sodium in the vapor. The finding, however, doesn't exclude the possibility of an Enceladan ocean.
-------------------- Some higher resolution images available at my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/
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