[Geysers] "Geysers" on Enceladus

[Bill Warnock]

While we're in the in-between period on Yellowstone's geysers, I thought some of you might be interested in the link below.  On the China eclipse trip some of us took this summer, we had several astronomers with us, including Trina Ray, who works at NASA's JPL on the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn.  She gave us a presentation one night including images of the moon Enceladus, which has a hotspot at its south pole and plumes of water vapor and ice crystals which go hundreds of miles into space.  She told us the probe would fly around 60 miles above and through the plumes in November.  That has now been successfully accomplished, and the pictures are wonderful.  Much data remains to be analyzed.  Just imagine, though, a 600-mile-high geyser!   Check it out:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2347
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