Enceladus

Traditional or digital! Share your photos. Do you view the world a little differently through a lens? Let's discuss photos that you find interesting or worthy of discussion.
Post Reply
User avatar
Tombstone
Posts: 3686
Joined: Mon Aug 02, 2004 12:00 pm

Enceladus

Post by Tombstone »

I'm an astronomy buff, so I really enjoy these types of photos.

Here's a little background on Enceladus:

Enceladus [en-SELL-ah-dus] is one of the innermost moons of Saturn. It is quite similar in size to Mimas but has a smoother, brighter surface. Enceladus reflects almost 100 percent of the sunlight that strikes it. Unlike Mimas, Enceladus displays at least five different types of terrain. Parts of Enceladus shows craters no larger than 35 km in diameter. Other areas show regions with no craters indicating major resurfacing events in the geologically recent past. There are fissures, plains, corrugated terrain and other crustal deformations. All of this indicates that the interior of the moon may be liquid today, even though it should have frozen aeons ago. It is postulated that Enceladus is heated by a tidal mechanism similar to Jupiter's moon Io. It is perturbed in its orbit by Saturn's gravitational field and by the large neighboring satellites Tethys and Dione. Because Enceladus reflects so much sunlight, the surface temperature is only -201° C (-330° F).

Attached files
Please use the "contact us" button if you need to contact a ForumGarden admin.
Post Reply

Return to “Photography More”