Ice jets venting on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, captured by the Cassini robot in 2009. The giant plumes of ice (water turned to ice as it vents into the frigid vaccuum) are now thought to be indicative of a giant ocean miles beneath the moon’s ice crust. (Click to biggerize the photo.)
At an average distance of 93 million miles from Earth, shoot, you could make Enceladus (a giant in Greek myth) a weekender. Some day. Maybe. When the solar system becomes our playground.
The Cassini robot spacecraft has flown by Iapetus, the strange, two-toned moon of Saturn, and the data will be rolling in and being analyzed for weeks to come.
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Posted in Space
Tagged Cassini spacecraft, Iapetus, Saturn. flyby
And you thought geometry was only for terrestrial engineers and architects? Apparently it’s involved in the maintenance of planets, as well. This six-sided hexagon–twice as wide as Earth–encircles Saturn’s north pole. It was first seen by the Voyager robot spacecraft in the 1980s and recently photographed (here, in infrared) by the Cassini spacecraft. There is some (disputed) thought that it is a vortex-like flow in the atmosphere of the gas giant. But its cause remains a msytery.
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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space
Tagged Cassini spacecraft, Saturn's hexagon, vortex-like atmospheric flows
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