Do underground oceans vent through the tiger stripes on Saturn's moon Enceladus? Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole and creating Saturn's mysterious E-ring . Evidence for this has come from the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn . Pictured above , a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. The unusual surface features dubbed tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue. Why Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moon Mimas , approximately the same size, appears quite dead . Most recently, an analysis of slight gravity deviations has given an independent indication of underground oceans. Such research is particularly interesting since such oceans would be candidates to contain life .
Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturns Enceladus
Astronomy Picture of the Day · 2014-04-06 · NASA (public domain)
Advertisement

Advertisement
Advertisement