Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2005 September 6
See Explanation.  Clicking on the picture will download
 the highest resolution version available.

Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturn's Enceladus
Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Explanation: The tiger stripes on Saturn's moon Enceladus might be active. Even today, they may 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. Recent evidence for this has come from the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. Cassini detected a marked increase in particle collisions during its July flyby only 270 kilometres over a South Polar region of Enceladus. Pictured above, a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from the close flyby. The unusual surface features dubbed tiger stripes are visible on the left in false-colour blue. Why Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighbouring moon Mimas, approximately the same size, appears quite dead.

Tomorrow's picture: looking down on mars


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