Images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have enabled scientists
for the first time to create a correlation between spraying of
jets of water vapor from fissures on Saturn’s moon Enceladus
with Saturn’s gravity and the way it creates stress on the
fissure. “This new work gives scientists insight into the
mechanics of these picturesque jets at Enceladus and shows that
Saturn really stresses Enceladus,” said Terry Hurford, a Cassini
associate based at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md. Enceladus is really unique in the Saturn system,
and in our solar system of that matter – jets of water and
organic matter spray out from long fissures from its south pole.
The long fissures have been nicknamed ‘tiger stripes’. Hurford
and colleagues suggested a few years ago that these tiger
stripes might have been caused by tidal pulls from Saturn – much
like the way the Moon causes oceanic tides here on Earth, coming
to this conclusion after noticing that the greatest stress on
the tiger stripes occured when Encel