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Saturn's Moon Enceladus Has an Atmosphere
Dimentox writes "The Mercury News reports that the international Cassini spacecraft has discovered that Saturn's moon Enceladus has a significant atmosphere, NASA said Wednesday.
The icy moon's atmosphere may be created by volcanism, geysers or gases escaping from the surface or the interior, the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.
Excluding Saturn's giant moon Titan, which was already known to have an atmosphere, it's the first discovery of an atmosphere on one of the more than 30 moons that orbit the ringed planet."
The moon has one third less gravity than the Earth, I don't know if you can understand that, but our vertical leap is beyond all measurment.
Titan who?
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
That's a space station!
the enchilada's my mom made had an atmosphere, too. Steamy, spicy, delicious! So Saturn's moo... oh, never mind.
I thought titan had methane storms and stuff?
but, alas, lacks ambiance. We give it one star.
Excluding Saturn's giant moon Titan, which was already known to have an atmosphere, it's the first discovery of an atmosphere...
Excluding the first it's the first? We have a word for that. "Second".
~Lake
Saturn's got a moon? It's called Enceladus? Blimey, you learn something new every day!
Any other moons out there I should know about?
The icy moon's atmosphere may be created by volcanism, geysers or gases escaping from the surface or the interior, the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.
Gases escaping?
It's the GNOMES!
Mt. Dew through the nose!
It's really great news for the mission especially after the wind measurement tool didn't function properly at first. 15 more years, and there'll be a space craft at this moon.
Make your computer faster: rm -rf
This may not be kosher to ask on Slashdot, but where's the article?
Excluding Saturn's giant moon Titan, which was already known to have an atmosphere, it's the first discovery of an atmosphere on one of the more than 30 moons that orbit the ringed planet.
Why not just say it's the second discovery of an atmosphere on one of the more than 30 moons that orbit the ringed planet. ?
Link It should be noted that this isn't an atmosphere in the common sense. The air is continually created and lost due to internal sources and weak gravity.
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Wired article as proof
Boy, did I ever have atmosphere after that!
Excluding the more than 30 moons that orbit the ringed planet, it's the first discovery of a moon orbiting the ringed planet!
Oh Enceladus, how I love the atmoshere around you, it makes me want to slap uranus.
*Any* atmosphere on a sub-500km wide moon would be significant. I'm looking forward to a more complete report as more information comes in.
Why am I suddenly hungry for Mexican food?
The Mercury News reports that the international Cassini spacecraft has discovered that Saturn's moon Enceladus has a significant atmosphere sounds like the start to a really bad sci-fi thriller.....
Don't go inside unless you want to be really confused.
(OK, it's a really bad joke mixing the wrong moon from the book with the end of the movie. Mod me down if you don't like it - why do you think this is AC?)
I know this argument is getting old, but this is a good example why we should be spending more money on unmanned probes instead of high-cost, low-science manned missions like the space station. There's little reason at the moment to spend large sums of taxpayer cash on things that provide little benefit. Imagine all the probes we could be sending instead. A whole fleet of Cassinis, Voyagers, and Mars Rovers combing the solar system! Let the private industry (ie. the guys with Scaled Composites and maybe even Virgin ;) take the baton on manned space flight. Hopefully the private industry will find ways to lower the costs so that when we finally need people in space, it'll be practical.
Please bear with me, as I never paid any attention to astronomy-related stuff. I'm just curious as to how many other planets/ moons/ celestial bodies out there are known to have an atmosphere? Is this a really big deal, or is it a relatively common occurance?
...we aimed at the wrong moon.
The Mercury News reports that the international Cassini spacecraft has discovered that Saturn's moon Enceladus has a significant atmosphere, NASA said Wednesday.
Not only that, but I bet there's an entire rebel base there as well!
NASA should better send down a probe there to check it out.
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So, you really mean that it is the second moon of Saturn found to contain an atmosphere? Why not say just that?
"That's no moon!.."
i know bashing the US is cool, but isn't this a NASA project paid for by the US tax payers?
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The war on terror is a war for peace
You need to visit Saturn! Don't get your ass to Mars, it's just deranged dick and hotness over there. Our orbitting moon has excessive "gas", and I need warn you to not have saurkraut or kimchee with one of our Saturn women over dinner. It's getting gassy around here. Just come and visit, preferably Polish and US-ians need apply.
Before anyone else starts...
1) You cant make a beowulf cluster out of moons, so one wouldnt rock (or gas..).
2) No moon has ever done anything to you in Soviet Russia.
3) ???
4) Bankruptcy.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
Homer: Mmmmmm.... Moon Enchiladas.
Comic Book Guy: For your information, my corpulent comrade, it's "Enceladus," who in Greek mythology was a giant who was defeated in battle and buried under Mount Etna by Athena.
...The icy moon's atmosphere may be created by ...gases escaping from ... the interior...
That could describe a lot of people I know.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
20 seconds ago I didn't know Enceladus had a moon!
"Titan who?"
Bombed at the box office.
Well, you know, half the developers in Atlanta are trying to figure out how to put their next development in place.
And then justify the commute.
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Excluding the 100 posts before mine, this is the first post!
Ok, maybe I went to far...
Excluding the posts above, I *finally* have a first post.....
All these worlds are yours -- except Enchilada. Attempt no landing there.
Shouldn't the Saturn News be reporting this?
... have they found where the black obelisk is located?
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this is the first post.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
Is centripetal force sufficient to maintain the astronauts' bodies? is there something else to living in a planet's gravity well we have not considered? All of these questions and more will not be solved by Space Station Alpha. (aka MIR 2: America Helps).
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The NASA portion was the Orbiter, which accounted for the vast majority of the mission.
Is more like a few of those super-ball thingies bouncing around a really roomy tank. The particles don't even interract with each other: the most prevalent collision is by far the particles with the surface. In fact, there's some question about solar pressure 'blowing' away the atmosphere. (though it would be replenished by solar wind particles) On earth would be very difficult to get a vacuum of the quality of mercury's "atmosphere." calling it a trace is extremely generous.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Cassini is NASA. ESA was the Huygens probe.
If both NASA and the ESA want to share credit for the whole mission, fine, I'd go with that. But that didn't seem to be the attitude when the Huygens probe landed on Titan. When that happened, I recall the ESA being *very* specific that it was their probe- and their accomplishment, and not NASA's. I thought that was a bit rude. In other words they want to share partial credit for what isn't thiers, but they want to take total credit for what is theirs.
Now we don't have to send that probe to Europa. We all know how bad that would be.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
In addition to the atmosphere, Enceladus also has a mountain of rice and sea of beans on one side.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
I call shennanigans. The article says Europa is a moon of Saturn. Europa is a moon of Jupiter. I was simply adding a correction/clarification for everyone's edification.
Then we'll know the real shit is about to go down.
Alternatively, since gravity appears to be insufficient to hold the atmosphere in, if the northern hemisphere's atmosphere and southern hemisphere's atmosphere never interact (eg: there's nothing left of either by the time you reach the equator) then you could again argue that they should be considered distinct and not part of a single whole atmosphere.
Of course, these are highly improbable, but this IS Slashdot.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
FreeAtmospheres.com [FreeAtmospheresOnTheMoonsOfYourChoice.com]
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What they are really advoacting is that we NEVER send humans into space again. After all, why send anyone away from the earth when we can just always send a video camera on treads? Why not just keep developing better video cameras instead of going to all the trouble to actually set researches on-site?
Or so the thinking goes. I fail to understand it either, as the thinking is as inherantly alien to me as martian microbes.
There are many that would advocate complete abandonment of any manned space efforts. Happily there are still plenty of people with sound long-term vision.
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Maybe it's a good thing I'm *not* employed as a scientist.
This way I can butcher the pictures.
Here is the link to the Enceladus image I cooked up to bring out all those surface features instead of that drab grey.
Enceladus Feature Contrast
Our sysadmin's cube also has an atmosphere created by gas escaping.
Amazing, a small moon orbiting Saturn that would fit in the state of Arizona, and we have pictures of this quality!
Nice to see the earlier post get modded down as redundant, and this one as +5 funny.
that was inspired
We were promised spectacular pictures but all we got was some grainy poor quality B&W pics and one false colour one of the surface. Given this is probably the first & last landing on titan for decades I think they could have put in a better camera. Even viking managed better quality pictures back in 1976.
Do they mean that if you stood on the surface you could feel a breeze, could you fly in it? Or do they simply mean that it has a measurable presense via a number of instruments? It doesn't even appear on the photos so it can't be that substantial.
One more of his predictions gets a gold star. Wouldn't surpise him to see small amounts of heavier hydrocarbons too.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
But surely it's the KDEs...
--not only duck, but run away and hide in nuclear shelter
For those who don't get it.
Oh, help yourself to another can of Perri-air before you pass out.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Perhaps Phobos' whacking great craters were made by outgassing too? If they were done by impacts, thees leetle moon, she's a history.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I would like to point out that the parent post obviously meant that its parent should be moderated "Interesting", when he said: vote this interesting. Who are you, mod-bots?
no
Unfortunately the important information is missing. At every larger body one will find an increase of the density of interplanetary gas (due to gravity) which can be called an atmosphere. The question is, what is the surface pressure at Enceladus?
Yes, but is it a class "M"?
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Saturn was discovered to have a moon called "Enceladus".
How many people make this unbelievable spontaneous generation claim still today!
that scientists think alien life would need water, oxygen and heat to survive. there is life at the bottom of the ocean that survives on sulphur and the heat from vents - there's almost no oxygen down there. Who's to say life on another planet wont be more obscure?
There is life on Enceladus...There is life on Enceladus...
Required reading for internet skeptics
Well, with the Earth only 8,000 years old, and the Rapture coming any day now, why bother with leaving the planet?
-Munch "I glad some people have an active fantasy life, I just wish they wouldn't apply it to politics" Wolf
It shows. Big time.
IV spends a fair few words shredding Jewish and other mythologies - at least, as they are normally interpreted.
IV predicted that Venus would be hot (but still cooling measurably), with high-pressure hydrocarbon-containing atmosphere and odd rotation while everyone else was predicting Earthlike conditions.
IV predicted that Jupiter would be a radio source, while everyone else said no.
IV predicted much stronger magnetism in the Lunar rocks than anybody else.
IV predicted that hydrocarbons would be found in comet tails, while everyone else was determined to stick with just dust and ice.
There were many other successful predictions - and watch out for solid-sounding but unsuccessful debunkings, as well. Velikovsky did indeed get some things wrong (IMESHO a few of them very badly wrong), but not near as many as his critics have claimed.
For example, the "Venus has no hydrocarbons" argument is based on measurement of the cloud tops, not of the body of the atmosphere. Would you expect to see heavy hydrocarbons in the could tops? The "Venus should have left footprints in the Greenland ice" argument was based on an ice dating system which mistook diffusion-based varves for annual varves (and is still widely accepted anyway, wooja bleev?). And so on.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing