NASA's Cassini Spacecraft Identifies 101 Geysers On Icy Saturn Moon

Scientists have identified 101 distinct geysers erupting on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus.

Using data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, scientists have spotted 101 geysers on the ringed planet's icy moon Enceladus and their analysis hinted towards the possibility of liquid water from the underground sea of the moon to reach its surface. The findings also offer clue to what powers these geyser eruptions.

Almost seven years ago, the cameras of Cassini spacecraft carefully surveyed the small moon's south polar terrain. This basin is famed for its four prominent tiger stripe fractures and 10 years ago, geysers of tiny icy particles and water vapors were first sighted there.

The result of the complete survey is a map with 101 geysers, each erupting from one of the tiger stripe factures. This provided a theory that geysers are coincident with small hot spots. It was this association that solved the mystery of the origin of geysers.

After identifying the geysers for the first time in 2005, scientists suspected that these were associated with the repeated flexing of Enceladus by Saturn's tides as the moon orbits the planet. It was thought that the back-and-forth rubbing of the opposing walls of the fractures generating frictional heat, turned ice into geyser-forming vapor and liquid.

But, the mystery was finally solved after comparing the survey results with high-resolution data collected in 2010 by Cassini's heat-sensing instrument. The geysers erupted from small scale hot spots that were extremely small to be produced by frictional heating.

"Once we had these results in hand, we knew right away heat was not causing the geysers, but vice versa," said Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini imaging team from the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and lead author of the first paper. "It also told us the geysers are not a near-surface phenomenon, but have much deeper roots."

The investigators found that the narrow pathways through ice shell can remain open from the sea all the way to the surface, only if it is filled with liquid water.

Models of tidal flexing also showed that it affects the height and brightness of resulting geyser plumes, further supporting the theory that Saturn's tidal influences create the geysers in some mysterious way, according to Nature World News.

The finding appeared in Astrophysical Journal.