Do underground oceans vent through the stripes on Saturn's moon, Enceladus? These stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon's 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 now orbiting Saturn.
Pictured above is a high resolution image of Enceladus taken during a close flyby. The unusual surface features are visible in false-color blue. Why Enceladus is active remains a mystery. The neighboring moon, Mimas, approximately the same size as Enceladus, appears to be quite dead. Most recently, an analysis of dust captured by Cassini found evidence for sodium, as expected in a deep salty ocean. If such an ocean does exist below the surface, it may well contain life.
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