Enceladus (moon) facts for kids
Enceladus is a moon of Saturn. It is the sixth largest of Saturn's moons, and it has a diameter of 500 km. Enceladus is within Saturn's E ring and likely contributes material to it. The moon is made mostly out of water ice, so it reflects light very well. It reflects almost 100% of the sunlight that strikes the moon.William Herschel discovered Enceladus on August 28, 1789. In 2014, NASA reported that its Cassini spacecraft found evidence for liquid water on Enceladus. Scientists now think that there is a large underground ocean of liquid water, around 10 km thick, near Enceladus' south pole. There are also cryovolcanoes (cold volcanoes) near the south pole. These volcanoes shoot large jets of water vapor, other volatiles, and some solid particles like sodium chloride crystals and ice particles into space. Some of these substances become part of Saturn's E ring.
Images for kids
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Enceladus's orbit (red) – Saturn's north pole view
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Possible origins of methane found in plumes
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Eruptions on Enceladus look like discrete jets, but may be "curtain eruptions" instead ([1] video animation)
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South polar view of the anti-Saturn hemisphere, with fractured areas in blue (false color)
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Enceladus – tilted terminator – north is up
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Enceladus – possibility of fresh ice detected (September 18, 2020)
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Enceladus – Infrared map view (September 29, 2020)
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View of Enceladus's Europa-like surface with the Labtayt Sulci fractures at center and the Ebony and Cufa dorsa at lower left, imaged by Cassini on February 17, 2005
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Close-up of south pole terrain
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Y-shaped discontinuities, imaged February 15, 2016
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A model of the interior of Enceladus: silicate core (brown); water-ice-rich mantle (white); a proposed diapir under the south pole (noted in the mantle (yellow) and core (red))
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updated and better scaled version]])
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Enceladus – organics on ice grains (artist concept)
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Chemical composition of Enceladus's plumes
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Heat map of the south polar fractures, dubbed 'tiger stripes'
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Enceladus (artist concept; February 24, 2020)
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Artist's impression of possible hydrothermal activity on Enceladus's ocean floor
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Animated 3D model of the Cassini–Huygens spacecraft
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Enceladus transiting the moon Titan
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A size comparison of Enceladus against the British Isles.
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Enceladus orbiting within Saturn's E ring
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Enceladus geyser tendrils - comparison of images ("a";"c") with computer simulations
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Enceladus south polar region - locations of most active tendril-producing geysers
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Enceladus and south polar jets (April 13, 2017).
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Plumes above the limb of Enceladus feeding the E ring
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A false-color Cassini image of the jets
See also
In Spanish: Encélado (satélite) para niños
