This site may earn chapter commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

TigerStripes

Cassini establish cryovolcanoes at the s pole of Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, back in 2005. These jets originate from the "tiger stripes," four warm fractures in the moon's icy surface. The chemical composition of the geysers points to a briny secret ocean that might extend the whole fashion to Enceladus' rocky core, like to the sub-surface ocean that is idea to be on Jupiter's moon, Europa. At present a new study has been published that agrees with the 2005 results, and sheds further light.

"During this flyby, we obtained the offset and, unfortunately, merely high-resolution observations of Enceladus' s pole at microwave wavelengths," said atomic number 82 author Alice Le Gall in a statement. Le Gall is an acquaintance member of the Cassini RADAR instrument team. "These observations provide a unique insight into what is going on below the surface. They show that the offset few metres below the surface of the area that we investigated, although at a glacial fifty-60 K, are much warmer than we had expected: likely up to 20 Yard warmer in some places."

Neither solar illumination nor Saturn'southward heating can explain this deviation in temperature, and then at that place must be an boosted source of heat. Le Gall and colleagues recollect that the anomalous warmth is because of tidal stresses on the moon as it moves through its eccentric orbit around Saturn.

Enceladus_geysers

Geysers erupting from Enceladus

But that'southward not all Cassini found. The icy crust of Enceladus has an average depth of 18–22 km, but the ice beat out gets as thin every bit an eggshell around the south pole. It appears to be less than v km thick there. The moon's four tiger stripes are in this expanse, making it highly that the reduced crust thickness, the 130km long stripes, and the warmer temperatures are all related. The tiger stripes too lack touch craters, implying that they're a immature formation that occurred relatively recently. And while the surface of Enceladus is typically covered in a blanket of very fine-grained water ice, the areas around the tiger stripes are coarse. CO2 and simple organic compounds have also been found within the tiger stripes (and nowhere else on Enceladus).

"Finding temperatures nearly these iii inactive fractures that are unexpectedly higher than those exterior them adds to the intrigue of Enceladus," said Cassini Projection Scientist Linda Spilker from the JPL. "What is the warm underground ocean really like and could life accept evolved there? These questions remain to be answered by future missions to this body of water world."