Raw, unprocessed image of famous plume crowning Enceladus
Dear ——–,
Yes, I made up the postcode. We’re in the Saturn neighborhood, looking at Enceladus, the planet’s second moon, which has mysterious jets at its South Pole. This icy moon is the reason I was a little MIA for the last two weeks. The Cassini spacecraft, which is one of the projects I work on, was taking its deepest plunge yet through the heart of the plume. Thankfully, the encounter went off without a hitch and scientists are digging through the details. (I helped a scientist blog about it.) I love that scientists know that there are water vapor, organic molecules and salt in the plume and that it emanates from fissures dubbed the Tiger Stripes. I mean, I can practically taste the spray. The fun part is figuring out how the jets are generated. There are suspicions there is an ocean under the icy crust and a heat source. If so, Enceladus would have the right conditions for life. Not my kind of life, though. I’m a wuss about cold and it’s -305 degrees Fahrenheit at the warm spot on the South Pole!
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