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MEXICO: A latest study, published in the journal Nature, has suggested that eruption of water vapor on Enceladus might be in the form of broad, curtain-like sheets, rather than discrete jets. Enceladus is Saturn’s sixth-largest moon.
In a statement, while referring to prominent wavy fractures along the moon’s surface, Joseph Spitale, a Cassini mission participating scientist and senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, said that they think most of the observed activity has represented curtain eruptions from the ‘tiger stripe’ fractures, rather than intermittent geysers along them.
Spitale said that some of the prominent jets likely are what they appear to be, but at the same time most of the activity seen in the images can be explained without discrete jets.
Furthermore, the study suggested that these ‘phantom jets’ seen in simulated images produced by scientists have lined up in perfection with some of the features seen in real Cassini images.
NASA’s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft had found evidence in 2005, showing an icy spray issuing from the southern polar region Enceladus. Researchers had even given confirmation regarding the presence of hydrothermal activity, recently.
