Saturday is Saturn-day!

Here’s a little mind-blower for you from Saturn’s E-ring. (big GIF after the jump)

Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which orbits relavitely close to the planet (within a sparse area called the E ring), has geysers at its south pole which spew a pretty constant stream of water ice into space (thus creating the E ring). There is also a vertically-oriented crescent of charged particles stretching from Saturn’s north pole to its south pole, with Enceladus right in the middle. (Oddly enough, there’s a similar relationship between Jupiter and its moon Io, which is also in a constant state of eruption.)

It was just announced this week that readings taken by Cassini at Enceladus make it seem very likely that Enceladus has a subsurface sea of liquid water. Let’s go swimming.