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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."
Titan who?
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
That's a space station!
So? Mars has 2/3 less gravity than the Earth, and it has an atmosphere of sorts.
The link doesn't seem to say, but anyone know how thick the atmosphere is, or what it's made of?
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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!
As to how thick it is, since it wasn't detected until we got "close" to it, it's probably quite a bit thinner than Titan's atmosphere.
Again,even though this is the field I'm in school for right now, I'm pulling all this out of my butt. So usue the usual grain of salt.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
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.
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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
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?
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.
It's right here. Why that page wasn't linked to in the first place is beyond me.
The link says that it's made of water vapor, but doesn't give a density. It's interesting, because Europa (a seemingly similar moon - it has the same sort of wrinkled surface) has a *very* tenative (about 1/100,000,000,000th of 1 atmosphere) water vapor and oxygen atmosphere from the sublimation of ice and the breakdown of water from interaction with the solar wind.
I'd imagine that this atmosphere is notably more significant than Europa's, or they wouldn't have described it as they did. And, with less solar energy at these distances, they're speculating that the source is from internal heating causing water geysers. That's really rather fascinating, when you think of it - now we know of another moon with a likely subsurface sea. The moon is a lot smaller than Europa, but it probably has more significant internal heating for its size.
Plus, the saturnian system has a lot of interesting organics - Titan is virtually a drifting mobile organic chemistry lab in its upper atmosphere. Even neglecting Titan, there's the unknown dark organics on Iapetus, Phoebe, and in the rings, among other places.
"Here's a fun fact: the moon has turned to blood!" -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
After this person you're the first person who has mentioned that.
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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Oh, it's almost definitely not organics. Encladeus is the most reflective large body in the solar system; it has to be almost pure ice and "gasses" (probably a tiny amount of oxygen from disassociation of water, maybe a little nitrogen, etc). In all likelyhood, it is geysers of water and/or steam that are creating the atmosphere.
"Here's a fun fact: the moon has turned to blood!" -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
So, you really mean that it is the second moon of Saturn found to contain an atmosphere? Why not say just that?
One of the passes was only 500km in height. Given that Enceladus is 500km in diameter, that leads me to think this is not a very thick atmosphere at all.
For comparison, Titan's 1.5 bar atmosphere is over 500km in height, and Titan's gravity is something like 100x that of Enceladus.
Fantastic. I thought I was forgeting something :-)
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
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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Wait, that didn't make sense as a reply. I think I replied to the wrong AC post.
Or maybe that "AC" jackass has the magical "post editing" power that we mortals lack . . . . .
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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.
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All my cliche are belong to you.
...but the atmosphere is probably composed of methane and other nasty hydrocarbons...I'm pulling all this out of my butt.
So it looks like we just found another rock that smells like farts.
So usue the usual grain of salt.
Or, considering all that methane, how 'bout "a hill of beans"?
Europa... has a *very* tenative (about 1/100,000,000,000th of 1 atmosphere)
:-)
To put this in everyday terms, this means that if your dumbass coworker in space yanks off your helmet without warning, you die in 1.0000000001 seconds instead of 1.0 seconds
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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 posts above, I *finally* have a first post.....
Shouldn't the Saturn News be reporting this?
has a *very* tenative
Tenuous?
Ewige Blumenkraft.
... have they found where the black obelisk is located?
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One of the pics on the site said it was water ice. That would mean the surface is convered with snow or ice crystals.
I, for one, welcome our new Encelords. Cool, it has an atmosphere, but does it run linux? And, last but not least... is it Sweex specific?
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.
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.
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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!
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.
But surely it's the KDEs...
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For those who don't get it.
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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
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Hey, When I submitted the article it had the link to the article. Dont know where it went, guess it got edited out or lost in the beam buffer of the /. article matrix. :P
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Yes, but is it a class "M"?
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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...
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