A plume of water vapor from Saturn’s moon Enceladus measuring more than 6,000 miles nearly the distance from Los Angeles, California to Buenos Aires, Argentina has been detected by scientists using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Not only is this the first time such a water emission has been seen at such a vast distance, but James Webb Space telescope is also giving scientists the first direct look at how this emission supplies water to Saturn and the entire Saturn system. his rings.
An ocean world about four percent the size of Earth, just 313 miles in diameter, Enceladus is one of the most exciting science targets in our solar system in the search for life beyond Earth. Between the moon’s icy outer crust and its rocky core is a global reservoir of salty water.
Geyser-like volcanoes spew jets of ice particles, water vapor, and organic chemicals from fissures on the Moon’s surface informally called “tiger streaks.”
“When I looked at the data, at first I thought I must be wrong. It was so shocking to detect a water cloud more than 20 times the size of the Moon,” said lead author Geronimo Villanueva of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The water plume extends far beyond the discharge area at the South Pole.”
The length of the siding was not the only characteristic that interested researchers. The rate at which the water vapor jets out, about 79 gallons per second, is also particularly impressive. At this rate, you could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in just a few hours. Compared to a garden hose on Earth, it would take more than 2 weeks.
The Cassini orbiter spent more than a decade exploring the Saturnian system and not only imaged the clouds of Enceladus for the first time, but flew right through them and got a taste of what they’re made of.
While Cassini’s position in the Saturnian system has provided invaluable insight into this distant moon, Webb’s unique view from the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 million miles from Earth, along with the remarkable sensitivity of its Integral Field Unit aboard the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) Instrument, offers new context .
“Enceladus’s orbit around Saturn is relatively fast, only 33 hours. The moon and its jets basically spit out water as they move around Saturn and leave behind a halo, almost like a doughnut,” Villanueva said. “According to Webb’s observation, there was not only a huge plume, but absolutely nothing but water everywhere.”
“Right now, Webb provides a unique way to directly measure how water evolves and changes over time on the Enceladus giant cloud, and as we see here, we’ll even make new discoveries and learn more about the composition of the underlying ocean,” added co-author Stefanie Milam of NASA Goddard. “Given the coverage and sensitivity of Webb’s wavelengths and what we’ve learned from previous missions, we have a whole new window of opportunity in front of us.”
Webb’s observations of Enceladus were completed as part of the Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO) 1250 program. The initial goal of this program is to demonstrate Webb’s abilities in a specific area of science and set the stage for future studies.
“This program was essentially a proof of concept after many years of developing the observatory, and it’s just exciting that all this science has already emerged from a relatively short period of observation,” said Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Webb Interdisciplinary Scientist and GTO Program Leader .
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