Do underground oceans vent through canyons on Saturn's moon Enceladus? Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole and creating Saturn 's mysterious E-ring . Evidence for this has come from the robot Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Pictured here , a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. The unusual surface features dubbed tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue. Why Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moon Mimas , approximately the same size, appears quite dead . An analysis of ejected ice grains has yielded evidence that complex organic molecules exist inside Enceladus. These large carbon-rich molecules bolster -- but do not prove -- that oceans under Enceladus' surface could contain life .
Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator
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Image Credit: NASA , ESA , JPL , SSI , Cassini Imaging Team