Enceladus

Icy Ocean World Enceladus Orbits In The Ring It Makes Around Saturn

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

ESA/NASA

October 6, 2025

Filed under biosignature, Cassini, E ring, Enceladus, ice, icy world, Ocean world, plumes, Saturn

Icy Ocean World Enceladus Orbits In The Ring It Makes Around Saturn — Enceladus orbiting within Saturn’s E ring Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute larger image

Saturn’s E ring is a huge, fuzzy, donut-shaped circle of particles around Saturn, that puzzled scientists for a long time.

Thanks to the Cassini-Huygens mission, scientists realised that the ring is actually created by particles left behind in the wake of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus.

This view, taken by Cassini on 15 September 2006, at a distance of about 2 million km from Enceladus, shows a plume emanating from the moon’s south polar region. This plume is created as water from Enceladus’s underground ocean spews out of cracks in its icy surface.

Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice and vapor from many locations along the famed "tiger stripes" near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The tiger stripes are four prominent, approximately 84-mile- (135-kilometer-) long fractures that cross the moon's south polar terrain. Larger image — Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice and vapor from many locations along the famed “tiger stripes” near the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The tiger stripes are four prominent, approximately 84-mile- (135-kilometer-) long fractures that cross the moon’s south polar terrain. Larger image

Astrobiology,

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

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