You need to upgrade your Flash Player The theme of this blog is not only and obviously space, but in particular “terrestrial worlds”, places that tend to have surfaces on which one could walk or at least attach oneself to. These places sometimes also have other earth-like familiar features such as atmospheres, weather, volcanos, geysers and perhaps, we are finding, even exotic oceans, rivers or lakes that are not necessarily made of familiar materials we are used to here at home. The second theme is imagery. Occasionally I do some retouching of images when needed if an image is incomplete or sometimes “dirty” or noisy. I will attempt to correct image shortcomings based upon other images or well-accepted presumed attributes. When this is done, notes will be offered as to what was added, why and sometimes how it was done. This way no one should ever wonder if something they are looking at is real or photoshop.
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Enceladus Building a Ring at Saturn

Ghostly Fingers of Enceladus

Hopefully by now, most people are aware of the shocking activity at this small moon named Enceladus at Saturn. It appears the moon is continually spewing out material (likely water-ice and rock) from a number of geysers located around its southern pole (see Life in the Hood: Enceladus for reference).

This image was taken around September of 2006, and reveals how Enceladus is actually constructing another ring around Saturn. The “ring” is not normally very visible, but by taking the image with the sun almost directly behind the structure - the particles become back-lit and appear brighter, like dust in a ray of light.

Close inspection of the image reveals quite a bit going on in there. You can see a darker path behind Enceladus as it sweeps up materials already left in it’s path from previous orbits. While in front and around the small moon, you can see jets of material being generated and going into orbit around Saturn. A similar phenomenon is happening at Jupiter with the torus created by Io’s volcanos as well, but I am unaware of any images illustrating that phenomenon as detailed as the one seen here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 31st, 2007 at 5:46 am and is filed under Enceladus, Saturn Rings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Enceladus Building a Ring at Saturn”

  1. Bryan Says:
    December 1st, 2007 at 10:15 pm

    So is that bright spot in the background just above and to the left of Enceladus actually the Sun? It sure puts a different perspective on it seeing it from that far away…!

  2. thomas Says:
    December 5th, 2007 at 11:03 pm

    no, that is just a star… but i do believe this image also includes us, or… Earth. if my memory serves me, i think one of those dots is Earth. the sun would not appear as just a bright star from Saturn, even at Pluto the sun would still be considerably brighter than any other object in the sky.

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