Enceladus’ ocean material erupts into space (IMAGE)
Caption
Artist’s rendering of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus, showing a plume of ice particles and water vapour erupting from fractures near its south pole. Material originating from the moon’s subsurface ocean travels through these icy vents before being ejected into space. The new study suggests that ocean droplets freeze slowly during this journey, allowing salts to separate before the frozen droplets fragment into the chemically diverse ice grains detected by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The illustration is based on observations from the Cassini mission.
Credit
NASA/JPL-Caltech
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License
CC BY-NC