The Fountains of Enceladus

EccentricAnomaly writes "Cassini has observed fountain-like plumes from the warm fractures near Enceladus' south pole. This confirms what had been suspected from an image taken last January. And seems to point to these cryo-volcanoes as being the primary source of Saturn's E-ring. There are also more images available from Cassini's raw images archive."

very intriguing

let's not launch a couple manned space missions and instead take the billions saved to plop a robot probe in one of these volcanoes to look for life in the underlying water layer.

Re:very intriguing

We don't need to look for life in the volcanoes. These photos confirm what I've suspected all along: They're out there and they're ice fishing!

Re:very intriguing

...to plop a robot probe...

Oh sure, 'cause that's worked rather flawlessly in the past. Just ploppin them down.

No manned space missions == less funding

let's not launch a couple manned space missions and instead take the billions saved to plop a robot probe in one of these volcanoes to look for life in the underlying water layer.

I think you may be ignoring another effect of no (or to be more precise and fair to you, fewer) manned missions over time -- i.e., less political support for space exploration and lower funding.

People will support a certain amount of funding for heroism, Star Trek, to boldly go... or to at least feel we are on the way there. They will pay far less to support inanimate objects in space. Boring... for most people.

Perhaps, in the short run, the savings from eliminating, or limiting, manned flights would be greater than the loss of funding. I suspect over the long run it would be death.
 

Re:No manned space missions == less funding

really?, I think the robotic exploration of mars and outer planets every bit as exciting as moon walks were. And no chance of astronauts being vaporized. Maybe we should put manned space missions on hold until we develop craft that aren't world's largest chemical bombs with low-end tactical nuclear yields. There's no scientific achievement that's been done by man in space that couldn't be done faster, better, cheaper, and safer by machine.

as the bard Homer would say:

Mmmmmm. Fountains of enchiladas.

Re:as the bard Homer would say:

Actually... everytime we have a telecon disucssing Enceladus, we end up going down the street to the nearest Mexican place for lunch afterward because we end up craving enchiladas. It's great marketing.

Amateur Analysis

Since Cassini is so slow in releasing results to the general public, you may be interested in this discussion (including some neat image processing) by amateur astronomers: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showt opic=1729 [unmannedspaceflight.com] This site usually get a jump on the official Cassini channels of about a week.

Re:Amateur Analysis

Pardon me, but Cassin is NOT slow to release its results. Some of these images came down in the past two *days*. And I'd like to note that they got posted to the JPL website almost instantly. That's actually rather unfair to us, since there's usually a one *year* propriatary period where the data are the kept by the people who put the work into designing, building, and operating the instrument. Thanks to JPL, anybody off the street can get up at 3 AM to grab the images of the website before we've woken up that morning, let alone gotten our coffees in.

Of course, amateurs are not bound be either rules for peer-review to get published or by NASA's process for press-releases, so their results will often appear on the web sooner than the offical findings. But they should also be treated with a certain measure of skepticism. Also, remember that the images that JPL posts aren't scientific quality.

Re:Amateur Analysis

Im very proud of JPL, NASA, and everyone involved with this mission. And all of the other missions for that matter.
Im also proud that the data is released very quickly, and openly.
Its a good thing all around, and we in #space on freenode understand the sensitivities involved.
I assume when you speak of the enthusiast compositions you are referring to the Huygens data?
I understand that all non-official work should be treated with a dose of sceptisim, but some of the images produced by the channel were good enough to be used by the ESA.
(#space irc.freenode.net)
Don't take me the wrong way. I am a huge fan, and supporter and a member of the Saturn Outreach Campaign.
In fact i hope you understand that us geeks are most likely your biggest supporters.
We should be celebrating, not casting stones.
Peace, good luck, and congrats!

JPL is amazing,
D

Re:Amateur Analysis

Also, remember that the images that JPL posts aren't scientific quality.

You got that right. IIRC, those are the images used in the "36% More Rock Ninjas Coming Out of the Earth than in Previous Decades" paper, presented in 1997.

Explains why they were able

Re:Amateur Analysis

Of course, amateurs are not bound be either rules for peer-review to get published or by NASA's process for press-releases, so their results will often appear on the web sooner than the offical findings. But they should also be treated with a certain measu

"hot spot"?

hot spot "temperatures observed within this region reached as high as 110 Kelvin (-260 Fahrenheit)."

ok.. now if i remember correctly 0 K means that not even the eletrns move.. and 273 K is where water freezes.. so this is more than half way there and this is the hot spot.. what is the cold spot like?

i am not trolling i am jsut currious.. maybe they jsut do werid things when it gets bloddy cold but being able to have eruptions that trow water out of orbit seems a little crazy.

Re:"hot spot"?

Well, all things are relative, and warmer than damn cold, even it's almost-damn-cold, is still warmer. Beyond that, I'm assuming that any substantial difference in temperature are going to produce pretty interesting effects.

Re:"hot spot"?

its not all that scary as long as your gravitiy well is shallow and your atmosphere is thin.

This has nothing really to do with the temperature per se, its more like a side effect.

Also, considering that the background of the universe is only 2.73k, 110k des

Re:"hot spot"?

Considering that Enceladus has an albedo of nearly 1, it's surface temperature is really, really low. (An albedo of 0.95 gives a surface temperature of 42 K.) So 110 is actually pretty impressive. And a perfectly black body at that distance should have

Ammonia hydrate

Pure H2O is frozen rock solid at 110K. But H2O-NH3 ices are not. Try mixing 50% ammonia and 50% water together and putting them in the freezer. The mixture will not freeze but will just become more viscous. Low temperature mixtures of H2O, CO, CH4, or N2 have similarly weird properties. Check this [ucl.ac.uk] out. The compositions of Saturn's icy moons have not been well established. But indirect evidence like eruptions on Enceladus, or cometary outbursts, suggest exotic icy chemistry.

cue the "Blade Runner" quotes

"If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes..."

I you think The Fountains of Enceladus are cool

Wait till they get pictures of The Geysers of Uranus.

Re:I you think The Fountains of Enceladus are cool

Why do so many slashdot moderators hate the Uranus jokes? I personally reckon their just Uranus retentive...

E-ring

This confirms what had been suspected from an image taken last January. And seems to point to these cryo-volcanoes as being the primary source of Saturn's E-ring.

I always thought those Defense Department guys [nbc.com] were out of this world. I never thought they were from an outer planet [wikipedia.org].

F ring a spiral! Read all about it!

All this news about Saturn and no mention of the news that the F ring is not a ring but actually a spiral [space.com]!

Looks like another place to search for life....

What was interesting to me was this diagram:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image -details.cfm?imageID=1681/ [nasa.gov]

In JPL's warm-spot modelling for Enceladus there is an undersurface ocean heated by one of the two now-familiar forces of tidal heating or radiological decay heating (though the former seems more likely).

So the statement goes: "where there is liquid water, there could be life". Do we have another Europa on our hands here?

"False-color"

One thing I'm constantly curious about is the degree to which "false color" should be taken. I understand that the purpose of false-coloring is to enhance details and make certain features visible that would otherwise be imperceptible (outside of the visible band of light, too faint, etc.) but I also want to know what these bodies would actually look like to the naked human eye.

Obviously, processed and filtered images are important, and very fascinating (case in point, many of the gorgeous images of the sun,) but it also diminishes the awe, in my mind, to look at a photo of a nebula or moon and realize, "this is not what it actually looks like."

Re:"False-color"

I can vividly remember the first time I got to use a "big" telescope - it was the 24.5" scope at Goldendale. I'd been reading "Sky & Telescope" for years, and had made frequent use of a very low-grade refractor. Finally I was going to see deep-space