Do underground oceans vent through the tiger stripes (in false-colour blue) on Saturn's moon Enceladus?
The long features, dubbed tiger stripes, are known to spew 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.
Why Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighbouring moon Mimas, approximately the same size, appears to be quite dead.
An analysis of dust captured by Cassini found evidence of sodium, as expected in a deep salty ocean.
Such research is particularly interesting since such an ocean would be a candidate to contain life.
Conversely however, recent Earth-based observations of ice ejected by Enceladus into Saturn's E-Ring showed no evidence of the expected sodium.
Image: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA
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